Category 6: Day of Destruction - Reception

Reception

The miniseries was highly successful for CBS, as 19.4 million viewers tuned in to the first part of the film and made it the channel's best-rated Sunday night movie in over two years. The second part was watched by 17 million viewers, the highest number of viewers for the channel on a Wednesday night for the fall season. Together, the two parts helped to push the channel to the top spot for the year's November sweeps week.

Despite the high ratings, the film was generally panned by critics, except for almost universal praise for the high-budget special effects. New York Magazine's John Leonard found it lacking compared to the feature film The Day After Tomorrow, though he did feel it had a certain "raffish zombie charm." Charlie McCollum of the San Jose Mercury News called it a "third-rate disaster flick — with lame dialogue, voodoo science and wooden performances — spread out over two nights and four seemingly endless hours." Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star agreed, feeling the filmmakers spent their budget on special effects to the detriment of the film's dialog. He called the film an "assault on common sense" for positing the idea that the power outage would keep everyone in Chicago from knowing that "something bad" was coming. Daily Variety found the film to be full of clichés and felt the side plots gave the appearance that the film was cast first and that the plot had been written to work around the actors. In comparing the film to a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, the magazine notes that it had "two or more disastrous taste treats providing a very loud macro backdrop to the micro tales that play out involving the characters." Kay McFadden of the Seattle Times also felt the storm became a backdrop "for a contrived soap opera that could take place in sunshine or rain" and that the special effects were fun, but did not feel properly integrated into their scenes.

"Category 6" has high aspirations. Executive producers Robert Sertner and Frank von Zerneck aren't interested in providing the escapist pleasures of a "10.5" or "The Poseidon Adventure." Instead, expect a brow-furrowing cornucopia of environmental abuse, job cuts, price-rigging, global warming, nuclear energy, gentrification, aging industrial infrastructure, tourist exploitation, computer hackers, workplace sexism, corporate corruption, piggish consumption and infidelity. —Kay McFadden, Seattle Times

The Chicago Tribune's Sid Smith found the film to be "pretty lousy, despite a wealth of impressive special effects that end with an image of a completely demolished Chicago skyline." He found the plot to be overly melodramatic and "hokey" with an excessive amount of coincidences and ill-fortunes thrown at the characters, despite the performances of the star-studded cast. Australia's The Age gave the film a slightly more favorable review, praising the stunts and special effects, though it noted the effects suffer from poor computer editing and referred to the film as "a little entertaining supertrash" that does require one to not think too much about the science to enjoy.