20141002: SciFi Review--The Colony

The Colony

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Canadian live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 94 minutes, scifi, thriller, horror.
2. IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 26,686 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 16 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 16% on the meter; 22% liked it from 6,465 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Jeff Renfroe.
5. Starring: Lawrence Fishburne as Briggs, Bill Paxton as Mason, Kevin Zegers as Sam, Romano Orzari as Reynolds, Charlotte Sullivan as Kai, Atticus Dean Mitchell as Graydon, Julian Richings as Leland.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film is set in a dystopian future.  To combat the effects of global warming, weather control towers were erected and set into operation.  They worked too well, and the world was thrown into an ice age of sufficient strength to freeze over basically everything.  There seems to be nothing left in terms of food production except for a few 'colonies' that can grow in the hydroponic environment.


2. In the main colony (Colony Seven), people are getting sick.  The sick are quarantined and eventually forced to die one way or another. 


3. When Colony 7 gets a distress signal (then nothing) from Colony 5, Briggs, Sam, and Graydon walk through the snow and ice to see what happened.  The power is still on, but there is no greeting party, and pools of blood here and there.  They discover a survivor, Leland, who tells them of a ray of hope.  They had augmented their antennas, and received a partial transmission from a third colony that had re-engineered a control tower to melt the permafrost.  They had dispersed the cloud cover and melted the ice down to soil.  They had called out for anyone who had seeds to plant.


4. Colony 5 had sent out a search party that did not find their target.  Unfortunately, another group followed them back.  Briggs and Sam try to get the map coordinates from Leland, but he seems too traumatized to be of much help.  Soon enough, the Colony 7 trio meet the killers of Colony 5.


5. Will Briggs, Sam, and Graydon make it back to Colony 7?  Will they be followed?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Politics of scarcity meets cannibals in future Ice Age.
2. Two stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Ugly.  It's dystopia, so that's not unexpected.  However, lots of the film looks just plain sloppy.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could hear the dialog clearly.  Background sound was not well used.


3. Acting: 4/10 Lawrence Fishburne was rather good, Bill Paxton OK.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Badly written.  Lame dialogue.  Unimpressive from beginning to end.