by Rich Cross
An indie space opera with aspirations to become a film series, Colonials arrives on ‘video on demand’ platforms projecting a confident swagger. However, the producers’ world-building ambitions are derailed by the lack of budget, and the movie’s confusing premise is badly served by an inarticulate script.
On a routine mission, a Colonial space ship is attacked and crash-lands back on a devastated planet Earth. Losing his memory as a result of the impact, colonist Silas is discovered by a resistance group but is targeted by enemy enforcers based on the Moon who want to eradicate the Colonials. If he is to escape, and ensure the Colonials’ survival, Silas must risk everything to demonstrate where his loyalties lie.
The movie tries to mix moments of humour with po-faced seriousness, but struggles to pull off that tonal mix. While some sequences are shot on location, for much of its runtime Colonials relies on a mix of basic CGI and green-screen work in the studio. At its most effective, that provides the film with the visual sensibility of a comic book. Yet a lot of the digital rendering is crude, unconvincing and continually distracting. That might be forgivable, if those images provided the backdrop for an exciting and innovative plot. Unfortunately, the writers blend the derivative with the incoherent in what feels like the first draft of a script. “This mission is extremely crucial to the resistance,” the exposition explains at one point. Low-budget, hi-tech sci-fi is always an extremely challenging prospect for any group of filmmakers. But while audiences can be asked to overlook scrappy FX, there’s less reason to tolerate poor storytelling and clunky dialogue.
COLONIALS is available now from digital streaming platforms
