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The good folks at Asylum Entertainment have a charming ability — parasitic opportunism to a cynic, exuberant connection to the spirit of the age to an optimist — to make films that are fairly close to other movies. Is Transformers coming soon? Well, says Asylum, bring on Transmorphers. Is 2012 coming to theaters? Say hello to 2012: Supernova, say the good folks at Asylum. And so MegaFault earns a few points for not being, in fact, based on another film in theaters or coming soon. At the same time, and let us be sincere here, those may in fact be the only points it earns. …

MegaFault begins as a mining operation in West Virginia sets off explosives and then is shaken by an earthquake … that doesn't taper off into a series of conventional aftershocks, but, instead, starts tearing west. In West Virginia, mining explosives expert "Boomer" (Eriq La Salle) is worried his blast initiated the quakes-string devouring America; in Washington, earthquake expert Dr. Amy Lane (Brittany Murphy) has her keynote address shaken by the quake and leaves her family's side to go to West Virginia to see where all the chaos began — and to assure Boomer that, no, he isn't at, uh, fault, which I just realized I was typing as I was typing it.

And the rest of MegaFault unfolds as Amy and Boomer try to keep up with the giant path of destruction being carved across America, with an additional side dish of peril as Amy's husband and daughter are cast adrift by fate while they try to make their way back home. Much of MegaFault plays like a '70s disaster movie on a budget — a verrrrrry low budget, with plenty of budget-level CGI representing both the terrible power of nature unleashed and the massed military might of the U.S. armed forces. Director David Michael Latt also made War of the Worlds — no, not that one, but the Asylum one — so he knows the Asylum style: Get in, get out, get on with it.

The film builds to a classic disaster-movie sequence, as our heroes must pull off a crazy risky plan that will — just maybe — stop the nation-devouring crevasse before it gets to California and makes the San Andreas Fault unpeel like a zipper. The CGI eve of destruction stuff isn't great — lots of fake broken windows and buildings falling into a fake-looking series of crumbling crags and yawning darkness as the clock ticks and the end of everything comes closer and closer.

The MegaFault DVD is nicely-presented in high-resolution widescreen, with a 17-minute making of featurette that you'll probably want to watch after the movie, as — to paraphrase — people who like sausages and low-budget movies shouldn't watch how they are made. There's also a full commentary track, which has the same maybe-you-didn't-want-to-know-that quality as the making-of featurettte. MegaFault has a certain appeal — especially if you grew up on '70s disaster flicks like Earthquake — but it turns out the only thing broader than the gap between the sides of the crack destroying America is the gap in MegaFault between the ambition of the moviemakers and the actual movie they made.