Considering that he is the most well-known and most experienced actor in the cast by some distance you'd think he would be. Lloyd really gives his all and the eccentric kind of character is one that would have suited him perfectly. Unfortunately Lloyd's screen time is far too limited to save the movie and while he is fun in places- more than his trashy material deserved- he badly over-compensates in others, which really sticks out like a sore thumb. The best performance In Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse actually comes from Joel Gretsch, he is a commanding lead and certainly doesn't look at any time look like he's confused or in pain. And Ben Cotton is pretty endearing and makes a real effort to make Marty likable; in fact Marty is like the bright spot when it comes to the characters. Unlike the rest of the cast they actually try to act.
That's very much it for things that redeemed Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse a little. Gretsch and Cotton are good and Lloyd tries but the movie on the whole is very badly acted- Emily Holmes attempts at being frightened or emotional came over as forced, Andrea Brooks is so annoying to the extent you want to reach into the TV and slap her and Aaron Douglas doesn't even try to act as the very stereotypical and painfully forgettable villain. Everybody else looked stiff and bored. The cardboard cut-outs passing for characters are as thin as paper, with only Marty showing glimpses of colour, and the actors are further disadvantaged by a clunky script, with a number of lines so cheesy that it makes the cheesiest cheeseburger seem tasteless, that gives off the sense of parody without the humour(got a laugh out of Sophie's line about her homework but that was not in a good way). As well as a story that is filled to the brim with so many clichés(with nothing fresh done with them, characters and situations) that the intense predictability severely dilutes the suspense and fun, also the further the movie wears on the sillier and more tedious it gets.
Production values are not much better at all, in fact one of the worst things here was the special effects which were half-baked at best and laughably amateurish at worst, the disaster scenes are ruined by how cheap they look and how much unintentional humour they cause. It was abundantly clear that more effort went into the making of the promising DVD cover than to the special effects, the DVD cover at least showed some professionalism whereas the effects were borderline hack-job. The colourless and one-dimensional camera work and lacking-in-crispness editing don't fare quite as badly but they don't improve things either, while the whole movie whether in the un-thrilling disaster scenes or the heavy-handed drama suffered from some rather characterless under-directing. The sound effects have a booming sensation but not in a way that thrills, in fact some of it's headache-inducing, while the score is over-bearingly melodramatic and monotonous. Overall, Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse is nowhere near the worst SyFy has done, but aside from two performances and the efforts from Lloyd it just doesn't work. 3/10 Bethany Cox
