A space crew diverts from their course to investigate a missing cargo vessel carrying a devastating time weapon. But when disaster strikes, the crew quickly finds themselves running out of time and if they fail humanity shall fall.
M**E
Decent plot. Not affiliated with "Alien"
This is not the Alien prequel, Prometheus. That is a different movie by a similar name. Don't read reviews if you don't want to know the movie details.The cover art certainly made no sense for this film. No aliens or battle droids. This is a "Groundhog day" type of plot in space where a sleeping crew is diverted to investigate a missing space ship to retrieve a mass destruction time weapon intended to wipe out a planet from time... namely earth (based on what I gathered from the female engineers motive).The main problem with this movie is the poor audio quality. It is difficult to determine what is being said by anyone or anything. Lacking subtitles or closed captioning, there is no way to supplement the inability to hear the muddy dialogue.It is also difficult to realize some crew are not human until the second android is found. It is nearly impossible to discern the physical location of the characters with the fog machines & odd camera angles which often cut off their heads, bodies and entire crew members.The identical wigs on the females & android also makes it extremely difficult to separate them.Too many tight shots at weird angles such as a 45 degree from floor level to ceiling & often not squared nor level; make it nearly impossible to follow their trek through the ship. Hence, impossible to understand their progression, location & purpose or accomplishments in the story. By adding bright lights glaring into the camera lenses from behind heavy fog and actors, it obscures the scenes even worse.This director & camera crew clearly did not understand the impact of bright lights targeted at the cameras & how it affects the lighting levels & quality of the imagery. Bright lights will cause any auto leveling camera features to close down the lens apertures or iris & darken the faces. It also causes glare artifacts & reflections in the anamorphic lenses. Even worse are the bright uniform & background panel lights which glare in tight shots.The Camera work is quite awful & continuously cuts off the top of their heads in every scene while the blinding shoulder lights on the uniform Epilets distort the light & color levels in each shot. Only a grade school child would frame a face between the chin & eyebrows or cut off the top of the heads in every shot regardless of subject framing distance.Too many film crews are using nose hair closeups these days with no clue as to lighting. They spend a fortune on set design but we never get to see any of it due to the nose closeups. Doesn't anyone have professional training on cameras & lighting anymore?As for the story, it wasn't bad. It could have been better if we could have heard the dialogue. As with Groundhog day, the events would restart each time they died & the events were slightly modifiable each time. At the final ending, it appeared the time weapon was the only survivor which halted the cycle. But it still wasn't fully clear whether the others were elsewhere or removed from existence or time or simply destroyed. It appears that the crew was killed by the female android & the weapon saved & ready for instructions for its next target. But the film kept changing at the ending as to whom was targeting what while 2 androids, 2 ships and one smart weapon were all targeting each other. The final blast appeared to originate from the weapon but did the weapon initiate it or the android? But it was also hard to feel sorry for such a clueless crew who shot first without asking questions, never listened & always made the wrong choices. Also difficult to be certain of the events with so many film audio problems. The movie could have been quite good with more funding for a better quality crew, cast & direction.Also quite viable as an excellent Outer Limits episode candidate. They should bring back that series for clever episode plots like this.The only problem I have with region formats is they don't mark the cases large enough so we can see which DVD player to use.
B**A
Low budget but saved from being 1 star due to actual sci-fi content
Look, I'm not being trite when I say I can't talk about the plot at all w/out spoiling it. You'll see why. But suffice to say, it takes one of the all-time classic sci-fi plots and spins it out to a satisfying, if overdrawn, conclusion.This is definitely a low budget production, but the absence of visual spectacle is made up for by the screaming cheapness of the sets, CGI, old tropes like the magic gravity machine, and the costume design. Don't worry, there's plenty for the eye to drink in, if you know how to look. Speaking of costume design, sure why not, let's just take some motocross gear and give it chrome spraypaint accents then stick random LEDs on to illuminate their rib cages and elbows. I mean, that's 100% what I would do if someone told me I had $100 and only 30 min to spend shopping at Goodwill to come up with a space marine suit.On a technical level, super bizarre decision to run 100% of the dialog through the left stereo channel only, ala The Beatles "Revolution" or something. It's definitely distracting. I thought for a minute they were gonna do a Traffic thing, "ok this is the blue story now, ok this is the yellow story now" only w/left and right audio, but nope. Just a strange choice, so strange I'm just gonna come out and say they messed up in the editing bay and this wasn't an artistic choice at all. The CGI has some atrocious artefacts as well. 2 ships clip through each other while docking, and the Prometheus has these... navigational lights? Whatever they are, they have god-level lens flare and some kind of glitchy filter on them that makes them jump off the screen like an LED dentist drill boring into your ocular nerve. But I digress, you'll see this shot at least 20 times for yourself.We do get good-to-great performances from everyone, however! The male android is maybe a bit miscast but he turns in an acceptable "Mr. Data experiences personal growth" day at the office. Maybe not the hardest sci-fi to have two androids open up about their feelings to each other, but their moments on screen together are electric, really good stuff. All in all the ensemble cast takes their limited material and it's really their solid, believable performances that elevate this far above most similarly low-budgeted sci-fi drek.I wouldn't say I recommend this film per se, but I'll put it like this: I set out tonight to watch the worst sci fi movie on Prime I hadn't seen yet. I am leaving pleasantly disappointed, this movie is actually surprisingly decent for what it is. The android scenes actually stirred my wizened, blackened heart, and I appreciated this iteration of one of the alltime classic sci-fi stories told in a way that didn't insult my intelligence.
R**R
Decent effort for a rock-bottom budget movie
My primary criticism of the film is the pacing. It's painfully slow. There are good reasons to have slow movies, and there are plenty of really slow movies that I love. But this movie seems to be slow mostly to fill time. Frankly, it would a lot better if it had been edited down to about 42 minutes and used as an episode of one of those Twilight Zone anthology type shows. However, there were a number of elements I liked, especially the character of Artemis, who was a complete puzzle at first, but made a lot more sense as the movie went on.However, given that they clearly had about tree-fiddy for a budget and a bunch of surplus Cold War-era equipment, it was actually a decent effort. The premise has been done before, many times, but this was a decent take on it. The acting was good. There were some weird production decisions that were probably driven by budget more than anything, but it held my attention, which is more than I can say for a lot of low-budget SF movies. But I must admit, I did keep having to suppress the urge to fast-forward. If it just could be seriously tightened up in the editing room, it would be a big improvement.
K**L
Could have been 30 to 45 min
Ok I watched the whole thing could have better pacing I liked artmus good casting there good Character. But ending left a lot to be desired
O**L
Low budget but an engaging story
What starts off with ideas borrowed heavily from 'Alien' and 'Event Horizon' quickly establishes its own credentials and develops into a rather clever sci-fi story. It is well acted and the pacing is just right. No spoliers but this style of story is not often done nearly as well. The biggest problem for the production would have been the lack of budget - although the digital shots of the spacecraft exteriors were quite good the sets, props and costumes missed out. But I found the storytelling good enough to look past these shortcomings and enjoy the film for what it is. It does have a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack which is OK. There are no extras on the disk if you like 'making of' featurettes and other bits and pieces.
B**K
Started not bad...
This is a low budget film, so don't be exepecting too much from it.Some of the gear in the film and sets is too old looking, toy walkie talkies, cheep headphones and the like, just didn't fit in for when it's set.Total of 12 people in it and only 6 did anything or talked and there acting is not the best.What special effects there is, is a bit basic.The idea and story is not bad, but didn't come over well in this film.
X**G
It doesn't worth of wasting even one second of your life.
I was fulled by its name and even reputation of Amazon ... and bought it ... and I watched it ... but only first 5 minutes and then dropped it directly in recycle bin ... at least the materials used to produce the disc and the case to be used in some more productive ways as whole film was not worthy of even one penny.
C**A
Three Stars
I enjoyed this film but needed to get my head around it first
G**D
not happy
was looking forward to this and was let down in so many ways, i guess 2013 is the year for so many CR#+ films to be made
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2 weeks ago
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