The Earth has been mined and stripped of all its natural resources and a new society has formed on a distant planet. Two generations later, and the humans have become infertile so a mission to see if the Earth has healed is launched. Contact is lost with the first expedition, so another is sent. Blake (Nora Arnezeder) is the only survivor and she discovers that while the Earth is still barren, but there are other humans living there. The problem is there are two rival factions and she’s caught in the middle.

For making such a high concept film on what we could imagine being a relatively modest budget, director Tim Fehlbaum must be applauded. The Colony manages to rise above the regular post-apocalyptic fare by giving us two strong female leads, Arnezeder and a warrior from the settlement played by Sarah-Sofie Boussnina. The revelation to Blake that they are able to reproduce is the catalyst for her to fight alongside the people, but she must win their trust.

The Colony boasts a fantastic set design and a believable, gritty look, which makes it always watchable. The story gets bogged down somewhat with its own mythology, though. The opening act is visually stunning and genuinely suspenseful, which is something that is lost to some extent when things move to populated areas and the politics and violence of the situation take over. That’s not to say it’s impenetrable. It’s an intriguing premise that is handled well in a film that has a fraction of the budget of ‘epics’ such as Waterworld. The bleak visuals that are presented in the remainder of the film evoke images of video games such as Fallout 3.

While it’s not a complete success, The Colony is an interesting, impressive-looking film that is well worth a watch for fans of desolate, but optimistic post-apocalyptic sci-fi.