It’s a wonder how sinkholes have been avoided as a catastrophe device in disaster movies. The reason may be because the disaster film prefers something that can be seen dominating the earth from above rather than from below. Only the earthquake managed to be the closest thing to terra firma that’s been depicted leaving behind the worst kind of destruction.
But with this week’s massive sinkhole in Florida killing a man, we may be seeing the progression of a previously unknown and growing natural disaster problem for major cities and towns. There’s also a chance for the disaster film to finally take on the sinkhole and show a scenario where they start to become random and regular occurrences worldwide. So far, only one cable TV film ever managed to showcase the sinkhole as a diffuse problem for a major city.
Back in 2000, TBS aired a movie called “On Hostile Ground” (starring John Corbett) that dealt with sinkholes in New Orleans. What was eerie about this film was in its scientific prediction of what would really happen later during Hurricane Katrina. And while this was a thriller based on real principles about how sinkholes develop, a big-screen take on it would have to be exaggerated to please audiences.
Alas, though, there hasn’t been a disaster movie made about en masse sinkholes. Yet ignoring it seems impossible after the undeniable facts are coming out about how extensive sinkholes could potentially be. If done right, such a movie could be one of the most terrifying disaster movies ever made.
The randomness of sinkholes would turn our above film into the potential of even the White House being consumed. So often, disaster films will have everybody else destroyed, but the White House or other governmental control centers continue to be unharmed. What would happen if D.C. became consumed with sinkholes and the rest of the nation had to contend on its own with similar situations?
Any real weight to the film is in the idea that when terra firma is collapsing, how many people can be held up in aircraft to stay safe? It all sounds like a premise toward taking people to live on a space station, a plot we’ll be seeing later this year in a film called “Elysium” with Jodie Foster. A sinkhole movie of the above magnitude could potentially be its prequel.
Of course, you can’t have a sinkhole movie without attempts at rescues. Despite sinkholes appearing to swallow people, the idea of the White House being enveloped into one makes for a compelling rescue attempt during the finale. The symbolism of the President emerging barely alive from the sinkhole would be a little bit beyond painful in its irony.
Then the film would have to get exaggerated: Have nearly every inhabitable place collapse into a chain reaction series of sinkholes so Earth is nothing but a giant crater.
In that scenario, audiences would have to go with the contrived movie philosophy of fatalism rather than thoughts of a very real and profound deus ex machina if sinkholes ever became that catastrophic.
