Ares 11 2016 Written and directed by Robert Goodrich. This is his first feature and it looks like his last feature.
It's a story about an orbiting spacecraft observing the Earth. The guy in charge of the observing is spending too much time talking to his pretty co-worker and doesn't notice the approaching missile until it's too close to get out of the way. The ship is damaged and there's only enough oxygen to get 2 of the 4 people on board back to Earth. They'll have to draw lots to see who takes the poison pill.
The unobservant guy looses the draw. He puts up such a fuss they have to choke him to death. He was a real POS, making me wonder about the state of their space program. Things get a bit worse and the movie was over. Glad to see the back of that story. Not planning to watch that one again. I wouldn't even bother to download it and I save all sorts of garbage. You can see it on YouTube, link above.
Lightning Strikes 2009 Written by and uncredited Rafael Jordan and directed by Gary Jones. Gary directed 3 episodes of Xena and 1 of Hercules. His first film was Mosquito in 1994. I saw that and it's a barely average, his 2000 film Spiders was a bit worse and most everything he's directed since barely gets up over a 4 on the IMDb. It's a film that was made in Bulgaria for $2,000,000. The sets are cheap looking and there aren't enough extras to make a town festival believable.
Kevin Sorbo is the sheriff of a town that's about to have it's annual pumpkin festival when strange lightning storms start killing people. A car is attacked by lightning, it cuts the car in two, the mother and son survive only to have the lightning chase them into the woods. The son is killed and the mother stunned.
The Sheriff gets out there, no one can explain how the car was cut in two. They find the woman and her son and take them back to the town. A trio of climatologists show up investigating high intensity lightning. They think the storm is going to be so severe that they tell the mayor that they should postpone the festival. He's not having any of that and there are dire consequences.
David Schofield shows up, he's playing a guy who's been tracking intense lightning storms since lightning killed his son. He thinks there's evil in the lightning, despite no one believing him it turns out to be true. They even put the creature on the poster. Things go bad for the townies and the scientists as the battle ramps up.
It wasn't great or anything, a mere copy of other, better films, but it held together most of the way to the end. It's just so unoriginal. I got to the end and gave it a generous 4 on the IMDb. I wouldn't bother watching it again.
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