Name: AE: Apocalypse Earth (2013)
IMDb: link to AE: Apocalypse Earth
Genres: Action, SciFi Country of Origin: USA
Cast: Adrian Paul as Lt. Frank Baum, Richard Grieco as Capt. Sam Crowe, Bali Rodriguez as Lea, Gray Hawks as TIM (Trans-human Interactive Machine; shades of Data on Star Trek, the Next Generation), Jayson McCardell as Sergeant Peebles, Michelle Jones as Hannah.
Written and directed by: Thunder Levin.
The Three Acts:
The initial tableaux:
There is a massive failure at establishing context at the beginning of the film. Just what is the initial situation? War? Disaster? I'm guessing war, but with whom? How can a ship (Ark) big enough to transport a sufficient set of survivors across interstellar space take off at a moment's notice from the middle of a city?
After cryo-sleep, the passengers on the Albert Einstein (the Ark seen initially) awake to find they are about to crash on a planet. There is a lot of confusion, then stragglers coalesce to form the group to be followed by the viewer and the indigenous hunters.
Delineation of conflicts:
Most of the locals ('Chameleons') are hostile. For instance, they imprisoned the surviving crew of another Ark, the Isaac Newton. The Einstein crashed into the prison where the Newton survivors were being held, and some of the Newton survivors are in the group.
The group adds Lea, a non-Chameleon local who is a loner and who becomes their ally. There is more than a bit of mutual distrust at the beginning: when forming a new heterogeneous group, there is usually the triad: form, storm, norm. Fortunately, the storm period is not too long.
After the new group is a bit more cohesive, what will they do? They are outgunned and severely out numbered. Do they reach for local power, in the form of new allies, or do they try to return to Earth?
Resolution:
After so many losses of personnel and resources, just what did the ark program accomplish?
One line summary: Escape from apocalypse fails.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 4/10 Usually plenty of light, but framing is iffy, and depth of field was poor. Jumpiness is common; it has the look of recurrent missing frames. All too often, nothing was in focus, and the level of graininess was high.
Sound: 8/10 There were a few problems with sound effects, but the actors' voices picked up OK. Some of the background music was rather good.
Acting: 2/10 Looks unrehearsed, at least early on. Gray Hawks' performance was terrible, as if he were doing an imitation of Brent Spiner as Data.
Screenplay: 1/10 The first 15 minutes were awful. Just two minutes of establishing material at the beginning would have made the first half of the film easier to take without giving the story away. I nearly bailed. The second half of the film was a bit better, with most loose ends tied up. Filmed in Costa Rica; on IMDB, I saw two estimates for the budget, 1 million USD and 350k USD. More money on screenplay would have helped, as would more budget on cinematography.
SFX: 2/10 Special effects were unimpressive to just plain bad.
Final Rating: 2/10
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