Butler stars as John Garrity, a Scottish-born structural engineer who is currently estranged from his wife, Alison (Morena Baccarin) as the result of some recent unknown transgression. However, their domestic situation soon takes a back seat to the imminent arrival of a massive and heretofore unknown comet, nicknamed Clark, that has recently appeared out of nowhere and is coming very close to Earth. Unfortunately, the comet’s tail contains huge chunks of debris that are heading straight for us and when the first one obliterates Tampa and creates a shock wave that knocks John off his feet in Atlanta, it becomes clear that things are about to get very bad. The good news is that John, along with Alison and their young, diabetic son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd), have been selected as part of a top secret government evacuation program because of his professional skills.
The bad news, alas, is that by the time they finally make it to the military base they’re scheduled to leave from, a series of events cause John to once again be separated from his family. None of them end up making it on any of the planes. Assuming that Alison and Nathan may now be headed to the Kentucky ranch owned by her father (Scott Glenn), John also starts heading that way, encountering a number of harrowing scenes. The same goes for Alison and Nathan, who at one point are given a ride by a seemingly helpful couple (David Denman and Hope Davis), and that goes very badly very quickly. Eventually, the three are once again reunited—if you consider that to be a Spoiler!, you have clearly never seen a disaster movie before—and the final reels find them making a last-ditch effort to cross the Canadian border to an airstrip where, the rumor goes, a few planes are flying survivors out to an evacuation center in Greenland.
I liked the relatively restrained approach taken by screenwriter Chris Sparling and director Ric Roman Waugh, both in regards to the on-screen carnage (though this might have been due to the film’s comparatively low budget) and to Butler’s character—instead of the superhero type he usually portrays, his character here is a perfectly ordinary guy whose only major skills appear to be driving, grunting, and when necessary, fighting off vicious goons with a claw hammer. There are also a number of scenes that pack an unexpected punch, such as Scott Glenn’s brief turn as Alison’s taciturn dad, and a genuinely tense sequence involving the seemingly helpful couple who represent the depths that some people will sink in the name of self-preservation.
