Yesterday, we took a run at reality with a big old slice of life from the crew out at Anchor Bay, and now they’ve given us a shot of the other side of the coin thanks to Ice Quake, a copy of which they sent our way for review. But will Ice Quake shake us up? Or just leave us cold? Read on!

Ice Quake takes us up for an Alaskan Christmas Eve, and while you might think it’s carols by the fire, a mug of hot cocoa possibly laced with brandy and the closest thing to a guaranteed white Christmas you can get, this year will be a different story. This year, a massive collapse of the ice shelf in Siberia is kicking off a whole lot of big climatological changes, and Alaska is about to get hit with the brunt of them. Ice geysers, people getting flash frozen, and the biggest methane explosion you’ve seen since Aunt Tillie’s last baked bean supper are all about to hit, and it’s up to a military geologist, his family (temporarily stranded while looking for a Christmas tree) and an Army colonel to figure out how to stop the massive ice quake from striking.

If the whole thing has a little too much like a SyFy Channel Original Movie to you, well, it should. It actually did make it onto the SyFy Channel some time back, but has only recently made its video appearance. And that’s actually not a reflection on its quality. Sure, it’s a bit outlandish, and more than a bit of the science on this one is unaccountably weird, but what it lacks in rational behavior it makes up for with a lot of explosions and some good tension building sequences. This is a fine example of disaster filmmaking, and those of you with a taste for it should be well represented here.

The effects work isn’t too bad–I can believe that those kinds of cracks would probably look at least something like how they’re represented here–and the cast, while not exactly the most recognizable names (there’s Jodelle Ferland from Twilight and Ryan Grantham from Diary of a Wimpy Kid), does a solid job of things, presenting a reasonably believable picture of an icy apocalypse. In fact, the sheer unbelievability of the subject matter improves the cast’s performance, because while this is pretty much impossible as far as I can see, I can believe that this is what it would look like.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives Ice Quake a seven out of ten. It’s a pretty solid piece of work–no great shakes by any stretch–but still a watchable bit of low-budget disaster fare. It’s surprisingly fun stuff, and will make for great popcorn munching fare on a cold Saturday night. Better yet, save this one for summer when you’ll be wanting a little shot of winter to cool things down.