The Colony – Movie Review
Recently we took a closer look at the movie Bounty Killer, that portrayed a post apocalyptic version of our world, namely a wasteland. This time we are presented with a story that shows us what the world would look like if it froze over and us humans would be forced to live underground.
The Colony will tell us a tale about what will happen to our earth in the not so distant future. The world has become a frozen desolate place that does not allow us to survive anymore, except for those that went in to hiding when things were still manageable. This brings us to ‘Colony number seven’. The colony is led by Briggs, a man that cares for its inhabitants but he is slowly facing the cold hard truth, that even this will not keep all the people he is trying to protect alive. Even though they have stored a decent amount of seeds, livestock and materials, the environment of the colony is not fertile and thus their provisions are slowly declining. Add sickness to the equation and no true medical care and you will come to realize how brittle the last survivors have become.
Shortly after the start of the movie, the colony receives a distress signal from the fifth colony, which seems to be the only one they allied themselves with. The signal is soon cut off and the fifth colony seems to be unreachable. Even though not all residents agreed upon this, Briggs decides to launch a recon mission to see how colony five fares. This is where our lead character, Sam, will come into play. Sam is also a gentle character that cares for the colony.
Having formed a three man team, Sam, Briggs and Graydon (think of the last one as the extra member in Star Trek’s away team – you’ll see it coming from a mile away.) start their arduous trek to colony number five. Upon arrival they notice all of the inhabitants seem to be gone and a clear indication that they did not do it by choice. They will soon discover that other humans are behind this, even though they might not be completely human anymore. The biggest portion of the story will then revolve around their escape from colony five and if they happen to do so, will it have consequences for the seventh colony?
Warning: Next paragraph is short rant that has a few spoilers. Skip it if you wish to discover these basic facts yourself, if not, enjoy me getting annoyed.
Writing about this movie without presenting you with too much spoilers is not a simple task and thus some portions of the review might be a tad superficial. Nonetheless it is fair to say that the movie has a fairly interesting and ‘exciting’ buildup to be ruined by a spiral of poor action scenes. Not the action itself is of poor quality, but the choices made by the inhabitants of colony seven are those you’d expect from a three year old. If our race should find itself in the situation of these characters and we happen to make the same choices as in this movie, we deserve to be wiped out. I personally can’t fathom how a colony of more than fifty people, that own guns, can lose fights against humans that only use physical combat. Especially when you keep in mind there is only one entrance that has the size of a normal door, which means you can actually just put one guy with a gun in front of the door and you’re still pretty much covered.
Spoiler rant over.
The characters in the movie are luckily a tad likeable, especially Briggs, who is played by Laurence Fishburne. Bill Paxton also stars in the movie as the colony’s douchebag extraordinaire, namely Mason, who’d rather make the colony his own personal pocket kingdom. He tends to treat the inhabitants poorly, and those who show signs of sickness are to be disposed of immediately. Sam, our lead character who is played by the not so well known Kevin Zegers is actually more of a passive character in the sense that you will not really get that attached to him. The fairly loveable Briggs will overshadow his performance for a decent portion of the movie.
Whilst the second portion of the movie lacks the quality of the first half, the flow of the movie isn’t all too bad. The beginning starts of rather slow, giving you sufficient information that adds up to the apocalyptic feeling the movie is trying to give you. When you have sufficient information, the action portion will start out, which is only ruined by the overall bad choices the characters made, or the awful script they have to follow. You will witness a potentially decent story get ripped to shreds because of this.
Music wise the movie offers a fairly subtle soundtrack that just sets the tone for the ongoing action or buildups. Not that much more can be said about it, but in the end it’s not bad.
Conclusion
The Colony proves to be a movie with a lot of blown potential. The movie will start out great, simply to be destroyed from the second half of the movie. Even with the poor script, this is a movie you can possibly watch once during the hot summer months, only to dream about the snow. (That being said, the first half is still quite decent.)
The Colony - Movie Review,
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