In late 1811/early 1812, four powerful earthquakes shook the little-settled center of the then-young United States of America near New Madrid, Missouri. They were strong enough to “reverse the flow” of the Mississippi, or at least give the appearance of it, liquify a village and flatten structures anywhere near it.
Bells rang in far-off Richmond, Va. and windows rattled in Washington, D.C.
Someday, scientists say, “the largest fault system” in North America will deliver another temblor or cluster of them just as powerful, with devastating consequences for at least seven states in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
So that part of the “science” of the low-budget disaster movie “Continental Split,” an attempted “Twister” or “Twisters” of seismology, is sound. Calling for state-wide evacuations, interrupting earthquakes with nuclear bombs? That’s the nonsensical magic of the movies, kids.
It’s a disaster movie that hews to the proven formula — a scientist (Jessica Morris) splitting from her fracking-happy engineer husband (Chris Bruno), kids (Allison Gold and Crew Morrow) hurled into jeopardy, called on to do extraordinary things.
A cynical Missouri governor (Alison Chace) frets over how this will play in the press and takes advice from a “Bomb this quake” scientist-Lieutenant Governor (Joe Kurak).
Can Jefferson City, Kansas City, or the St. Louis Arch be saved?
The set pieces and moments of peril aren’t awful, and the effects — depicting a sinkhole lake suddenly disappearing, a tidal wave roaring towards St. Louis and assorted downtown collapses and “liquifactions” — are right on the cusp of acceptable.
But anybody who’s ever heard of the New MAD-rid quakes and the New MAD-rid fault knows how to pronounce the name of the town. Missourians and Tennesseans and Arkansans and hell, a whole lot of people with a casual knowledge of history/geography and geology don’t have to be local to know it’s “New MAD-rid,” and not “New MadRID,” like the city in Spain the town and fault are named for.
Nobody in the movie — not the locals, the scientists, the governor or lieutenant governor — pronounces it right. And nobody else and I mean NOBODY in this cheesy little B-movie did. Nobody on camera, nobody writing, directing, working on the set came forward to say, “Hey guys, it’s New MADrid, isn’t it?”
That’s not reason enough to pan a picture, but it’s close. The first time we hear the mispronunciation is when a geologist (Quintin Mims) rolls up on a good ol’boy fishing at a “newly formed sinkhole” lake in the middle of river flooding all over the region.
The “newly-formed” lake has been full of water long enough for somebody to build a DOCK for Bubba Hates-the-Gummint to fish from, a dock that looks old enough to have been around the last time St. Louis won the World Series.
So, dude is FISHING in a NEW sinkhole from an old DOCK, and he doesn’t correct the geologist who doesn’t know how to pronounce New MADrid. Damn.
We know everything that follows is going to be dumb. Sadly, it turns out to not be the “so bad it’s FUNNY” dumb.
The dialogue’s all mutual scientific respect — “The pleasure’s all MINE. I know your work!” — and mutual loathing.
“My predictive models don’t lie!” “You stole my mom’s research!”
The “blame” for the quake falls on fracking, which the governor damned sure isn’t going to accept.
“That fracking brought in MILLIONS.” Ask Oklahoma about that, “Show Me State.”
And the notion that quakes coming from the nation’s midsection will be “2012” level and “split the continent” in any sense just means that you don’t know the Mighty Mississippi already does that, and isn’t likely to widen into a mid-continental sea, even after The Big One.
“Continental Split” begins with a sinkhole — somewhere in the vicinity of New Madrid MADrid — and never for a second crawls out of it.
Rating: TV-14, disasters and death
Cast: Jessica Morris, Chris Bruno, Canyon Prince, Quintin Mims, Iman Mireille Kamel, Roxanne G.C. Brooks, Crew Morrow and Allison Gold.
Credits: Directed by Nick Lyon, scripted Gil Luna and Joe Roche. A Tubi release.
Running time: 1:27
