Battlespace

I'd never heard of zero budget "auteur" Neil Johnson before seeing "Battlespace" on DVD at Hollywood Video. A few minutes into the movie I realize this isn't a bad thing. Like many straight to video Sci-Fi movies, this is a film dominated largely by overused bad special effects and a constant parade of pretentious sci-fi concepts that fail to create a story.

Viewers are tortured with a religious sounding text introduction, then a spoken introduction followed by a narration by the main character's daughter. To me this seemed like a smoke screen to mask a film with militantly ugly visuals and zero character emphasis. Some people on here seem all too ready to take this film seriously and swallowed it's seemingly new age messages hook line and sinker. These favorable reviews must come from the same kind of people who can delude themselves into thinking that things like "Battlefield Earth" was a brilliant movie, or that Shasta is just as good as Coke.

Those who were lured in by the cheesy cover art can look forward to lousy acting (in small doses, spaced with long blocks of people not talking), rotten computer animated effects (in extra large doses), and irritating talking computers. What you won't get is excitement, emotional stimulation, memorable dialogue, or a good story.

"Battlespace" is impenetrable bull and the constant irritant of the narration proves it. Real science fiction, hell, real film-making, is about characters and their dialogue, not special effects and dull predictions. This is right down there with similar direct to video sci-fi like "Cl.One" and "Recon 2022". If the boredom of "Strange Horizons" and "Alien Visitor" is something you seek out, by all means, watch the crap out of this. If you enjoy good storytelling and hate fake lens flares, you're better off with a real movie.

Just before anybody gets defensive, it is not as if I make a living out of criticising low-budget movies(I'm really a music student who only has enough money to pay rent and to do a £15-20 weekly shop for three months worth with the occasional trip to the cinema). I have seen movies that are actually watchable even with the low budget. Battlespace is far from watchable, in fact while far from the worst movie I've ever seen it is so bad that are this tempted to give up half-way through. The only good thing about Battlespace was the soundtrack, which I only found decent. Otherwise this is an example of a truly inept movie in every other department. Battlespace looks incredibly cheap, the special effects are really slipshod, the settings and costumes drab and completely uninteresting and bacon-slicer-like editing. For all its cheapness though, the visuals aren't actually the worst asset about Battlespace. The narration and the story are. The narration is thoroughly exhausting in alternative to interesting and it just rambles on and on and on that you are actually begging(inside your head and out loud) for it to shut up. It often is completely irrelevant. The story is interminably dull, the first half literally doesn't move so I'm not surprised people bailed out(though I always think that you shouldn't judge a movie unless you see the whole thing), and needlessly convoluted, almost feeling like five or six completely different movies. There are action sequences here and there but poorly shot and choreographed by someone who is either inexperienced or doesn't have a clue what choreography is. The characters are aimless and just infuriate you, the direction is leaden with no life whatsoever and the acting consists of everybody literally sleepwalking through their roles. Overall, an inept movie all round, don't waste your time. 1/10 for the soundtrack only. Bethany Cox

OK, please believe me when I say that this is a terrible, terrible, sci-fi movie. Its done so poorly that much of the film plays out as unintentional surrealism and its absolutely a 100% waste of time. Awful, but somehow also deeply unfunny. I watched this as a double feature with "Recon 2020: The Caprini Massacre" and although "Battlespace" WAS an incredibly superior film, that's not saying much. The plot of "Battlespace" is so completely convoluted that its impossible to follow. The narration is cryptic, often nonsensical, seemingly endless, and thoroughly exhausting. Literally half the film is duplicative scenes of the female lead, who looks like Brian Bosworth, walking through the desert. The movie actually starts out pretty cool, but then nosedives into pooptown and somehow continues to deteriorate, minute by minute. Absolutely horrible and truly an Absurdist Endurance Test. Zero stars. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

I am willing to tolerate almost anything in a Sci-Fi movie, but this was almost intolerable. While a few of the special effects are very cool (landscapes) this is no 'battlespace' rather a disjointed weird mother/daughter relationship with sci-fi concepts thrown in. The acting (wooden), framing and shooting (kindergarten film school) and with "hand-to-hand" combat scenes funnier than any Hong Kong chopsocky movie, this film bores. The plot line is convoluted and the devices used to move the plot along (narrator), unexplained scene jumps and plenty of deus ex machina reinforce the idea that writer cum director is not a good idea. Save your love of Sci-Fi for something else instead of losing a bit of it here.

While I understand that directors, foley artists and sound editors want to make scifi and military communications between ships sound authentic, most of the communication was so garbled and laced with special effects that you couldn't understand what actors and crew members were saying to each other.

I'm not talking about background chatter, etc. I'm talking about communication that we are clearly supposed to hear and understand as an audience. If you have to keep rewinding a movie to try and understand what the cast is saying, it's a failure.

I also agree with others that the acting was wooden. The Narration by the daughter and line delivery of her mother almost put me to sleep.