The title and exploding Capitol Dome on its DVD cover want to summon forth warm, landmarks-go-boom! memories of Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, but this schlocky Syfy sci-fi offering, while heavy on destruction, is so creatively stillborn as to elicit little more than half-arched-brow boredom.
On the Fourth of July, while all of the United States is apparently busy enjoying hot dogs and apple pie at picnics, an alien horde descends, laying waste to everything in its path. When America’s fighter jets are quickly dispatched by the alien invaders — who look suspiciously like a cross between giant, zippered ball bearings and the same sort of flying metallic alien crafts from 2012’s Battleship — it’s up to rogue scientist Celia (Emily Holmes), physics-loving teenager Eliza (Andrea Brooks), and fireman Pete (Ryan Merriman) — the son of stranded President of the United States Sam Garcette (Tom Everett Scott) — to team up and try to activate the only technology capable of taking down the alien mothership.
As an original Syfy movie, Independence Daysaster naturally doesn’t have the budget to compete with Emmerich’s aforementioned 1996 disaster porn, but it seems to have only a rudimentary grasp of this fact. Rudy Thauberger and Sydney Roper’s screenplay is an awkwardly blended mix of the perfunctory and outlandish, and director W.D. Hogan oversees a middling technical package with a point-and-shoot mentality that prizes money-shot theatrics over all else. The dramatic underpinnings here are just not such that one develops a rooting interest in regards to anything that unfolds.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Independence Daysaster comes to DVD presented in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track that is fairly meager on the low-end bass. Apart from chapter stops and a clutch of trailers, there are no supplemental features herein, further denting this title’s value as anything other than a quickie rental for Syfy genre completists. Nevertheless, to purchase the DVD via Half, click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)