User Reviews

I originally picked The Black Hole up because I thought it was the original seventies one. So I was already a little disappointed when I discovered this was some TV movie from two years ago but I watched it anyways and I'm glad I did. Certainly it's not going into the sci-fi hall of fame but considering it's a TV film on a TV budget it's a decent little flick with some campy acting but somehow a relatively decent story and even some very decent special effects. It would appear as though director Tibor Takács is one of the masters of TV horror camp. He has done no less than 20 of these types of films so he should have some sort of talent involved in it and he does. He uses the story and budget and effects the best that he can to make a decently watchable flick. The plot of the film is actually very good for sci fi fans. A man made black hole releases a monster of energy that begins to destroy everything in it's path. Focusing rather heavily on the city of St. Louis they certainly create a destructive path in the city.

Judd Nelson plays outcast scientist Eric Bryce who becomes the unwilling hero of the story. Nelson can act...we've seen it before but he seems to be getting caught in these roles of the washed up drunk but even still he does a pretty decent job of carrying this film. He's watchable and actually makes a very down to earth hero in the end. Kristy Swanson is fellow scientist and love interest Shannon Muir. Swanson looks like a deer in the head lights for most of the film but she supports Nelson decently enough although their romance and tension is a little strange to me. She is okay in the role but not the stand out performer by any means. David Selby is really terrific in a very subtle kind of way as General Ryker. He is also a hero in his own way and although he doesn't get a lot of dialog he does a really great job in the role and is probably one of the stronger characters in the entire film. I think he could have carried the film himself.

The Black Hole won't put you on the edge of your seat by any means but to kill an hour and a half it's not the worst thing you could watch. The decent story and decent acting makes it worth seeing if you're a sci-fi nut and looking for something different. As mentioned earlier the special effects really aren't that bad, in fact they are well done. Watching the St Louis arch fall apart was very cool and although it's probably stock footage...the actual city being destroyed was also very cool. All in all I suppose you'd have to be a fan to really bother watching it but there is far worse out there in Television and on DVD for that matter. 7/10

Lets put aside the bad acting, that comes with the SciFi territory. Lets put aside the bad science with a black hole forming for no damned good reason. Lets put aside that Nelson's character is searching for the cause of the trouble by asking what the atmospheric conditions were AFTER the black hole showed up. Lets put aside the fact that he warns them not to drop a nuke on something that sucks energy and could cause it to move elsewhere and make it bigger, and in spite of that they keep constantly claiming that they need to nuke the thing. Lets put aside the sad attempt at a side story on the director who is sick and gets trapped inside the collapsing building. Lets put aside the lame attempt at a subplot of romance that they never take any time developing. And last but not least, lets put aside the notion of a monster that goes through a black hole just so it can run along power lines, is smart enough to take a trap and throw it at the soldiers trying to trap it, but is too stupid to avoid getting on the back of a generator truck heading back towards the black hole. Now that we have put all that aside I can tell you all about the movie in one sentence. It sucked hard. Wow, what a stinker. I wanted my money back and I didn't even pay to see it!

I've read better stories in fanzines. Judd Nelson gave his worse performance as the lead in this film, whiny in his righteous regarding his idea of getting rid of "the great energy entity", whiny about being separated from his kid, whiny about every decision he had to make. Everything that happened, every character written within I could cross-reference with another made by Sci-Fi channel film. I'm surprised David Keith didn't show up as the made-to order bad guy. I can't believe I had been so anxious to see this clap-trap. The hole was not black but a gray cgi whirlpool and even this took too long in the film to show up. Not going to rate this trash as it doesn't deserve a rating.Finally, I'm ending by saying I can't believe I waited ALL WEEK TO SEE THIS FILM and that I'll never watch it again.

This should NOT be confused with Black Hole, the excellent graphic novel that I reviewed by Charles Burns or the David Brin novel Earth which are both must reads.

This flick (Black Hole starring Kirsty Swanson and Judd Nelson]) is a must skip. In fact, this film should not be confused with anything even mildly connected to the word excellent.

It was an embarrassing mess.

It starts promisingly. In fact, it starts very similarly to David Brin's great novel Earth. A black hole is artificially created and stabilized (in the book by Brin, they were looking for a power source and deliberately created the hole. In this addled movie, they were doing quantum research and wound up with a surprise, actually two)

So, with the black hole comes a creature. No one understands the creature (including myself having watched this piece of crap) or its motivations other than it likes electricity and hates loud noises. Somehow it's affiliated with the black hole, which looks like a miniature hurricane and moves just as ponderously, wiping things out in its path.

First about the acting...it's terrible but I know Nelson is capable of better. The script is to blame and some of the lines are real howlers. Nelson seemed embarrassed the entire time and had NOTHING to do until the end, when he saved everyone. There's half a plot line that he's divorced and his ex-wife and daughter finally see his value as he's saving the world. Of course, there's another jarring plot line where he's either in love with Kristy Swanson or had an affair with her or something. Boy, it's ridiculous.

Swanson looks good. She's never been a brilliant actress. In fact, the only movie I can recall where she impressed me was Higher Learning and that was only because I dug her plot line as a bi-curious chick seducing Jennifer Connelly.

Last, the physics. A black hole would not sit on the surface of the planet if it were released there. In fact, what is most likely is that it would sink immediately into the earth and orbit the core, eating the planet from within, a place we can't get to. That was the plot of Brin's novel (among many other plots) and it was much better than either this addled flick or (for that matter) most other hard sci-fi novels. Next, whatever the creature was, I don't know why they felt the need to make it humanoid. If there are creatures that live in black holes (black rabbits maybe?) then I doubt they need musculature, faces or would need to tap electrical power lines. What was it eating before it popped out of its hole?

Skip it. It's worth neither the time to watch nor the effort to write this review. Spend the time either reading Brin's book (Earth) or getting the graphic novel (which is science fiction but nothing like you'd expect). Click below for links to those.

The black hole in 'The Black Hole' doesn't suck very well. It's more like a whirlpool with pretensions. The scientific veracity of the movie is quite implausible and the story itself mixes up several disaster movie clichés to little effect. The main plot is that scientists accidentally create a black hole in St. Louis and also bring onto the earth an electrical monster from... well it's not made clear... which goes on a rampage in Missouri. The ending of the film is particularly silly and makes no sense. The cast are underpowered and top-billed Kristy Swanson is largely wasted, the lead being taken by a dull Judd Nelson as Eric the scientist with a black beard that was more impressive than the black hole.

*Spoiler/plot- The Black Hole, 2006, With a scientific mishap, humanity is faced with a growing galactic black-hole in St. Louis with an electricity feeding life-form that was unleashed from another space/time dimension.

*Special Stars- Judd Nelson, Kristy Swanson, David Shelby

*Theme- Science often probes into matters that are better left unknown.

*Trivia/location/goofs- TV movie, Watch for the electricity eating alien in this film.

*Emotion- It looked like this film was 'cashing-in' on the era's black-hole studies making into nightly news reports. It's very bad and a waste of the starring actor's talents. A rather crazy film with the low-key dramatic situations but somewhat saved by the rest of the film's good horror pacing. The slow and tedious plot make the viewer over-interested in the electricity eating power alien of this film, but it is a buzz-kill plot element too.

Judging from the commercials, this was going to be about the stupidest thing to hit the airwaves since Deep Core, but in the end, it didn't insult my intelligence nearly as much as I expected. Some scientists are running experiments with a particle collider, and something goes wrong. They don't know what it is at first, but soon an odd phenomenon starts forming: A black hole! It wasn't done in nearly as idiotic a fashion as I had expected. Anyhow, of course it keeps growing, the female scientist has to call in her ex-boyfriend, the big brains of the outfit, to figure everything out, and the military shows up...actually, they show up to help, unlike 99% of the movies in this genre where they're just there to prevent the heroes from doing what must be done to save the day. David Selby (Dark Shadows fans may remember him as Quentin Collins) does an excellent job as the military General, trying to let the scientists do whatever it takes to stop this thing, while his bosses want - of course - to nuke it. Just because that's what they always want to do in these movies. Oddly enough, there's some sort of invisible, power-consuming monster that comes out of the black hole and starts following the power lines to the main generating plant. Much of the plot is concerned with dealing with this guy.

The ending is a bit silly, but they always are in this sort of film. I thought the special effects were a cut above average, and a bit creative as well. Sure, the science is completely wacky, but that was expected. You could hardly do a movie about a black hole and have the science be plausible, because the movie would just consist of the characters saying "We're screwed", and then the credits could roll.

Overall, a somewhat above average effort for the Sci-Fi Channel. Likable characters, semi-believable plot (stress on the "semi"), and just some good old B movie fun.

Most of my charitable 4 rating comes from the underlying idea of a black hole spawned on the planet and slowly growing. It could make an epic disaster flick, and even if some of the rules of science were bent or broken, still be a darn good flick.

This however is NOT the one. I mean, not only a black hole but an "energy creature" that walks around following power lines? That's like watching War of the Worlds and suddenly Godzilla shows up as well. It moves it from Science Fiction into the Theatre of the Absurd.

This doesn't seem to be that low of a budget movie either. There were passable and sometimes good special effects. A lot of helicopters, although they were mostly budget helicopters. The acting was for the most part OK.

So how to excuse the ridiculous plot holes and goofs pointed out in many of the reviews? How to excuse the stereotyped hut hut hut soldiers, or the Evil General, the One Scientist does it all approach, the ridiculous side plot of the little girl etc etc etc? To say nothing of the obviously telegraphed ending, half way through the movie? It's like a cake with decent ingredients that was simply not properly cooked. Worth watching to pass the time but as good sci fi? bleh

The idea of a black hole being created due to a failed experiment in a experimental lab on our own planet was the thing which made me watch this film. And of course being it a science fiction movie. The first 10 to 15 minutes were not bad, after that it is a complete waste of time. They come with with the idea of alien creature which uses the black hole as a kind of portal to consume electricity on our planet, and which is annoyed by sound. It also uses electric power-lines to move around. The scientists do not explain how it is possible for a being consisting of energy, to emerge from a black hole, which supposedly consumes everything, even light (which is a kind of energy as well), hence the name black hole. It looks like a black hole because the gravity pull of it consumes everything. Not in this movie. The black hole in this movie looks more like a tornado. The best part of the movie is the way they make the Gateway Arch of St. Louis crumble down. Watch this part, and skip the rest, because the rest is a complete waste of time.

Scientists accidentally create a black hole in St Louis and want to destroy it before it consumes East St. Louis which I thought was the plan. Only Judd Nelson and Kristy Swanson can save us from the military preventing using nuclear weapons. Also, there is a giant dyno-man monster that came through the black hole,

Characters were boring. They attempted to create a story with a daughter and ex-wife. Folks stand around and watch the hole grow.