The Last Scout

A pretty decent space thriller. The atmosphere and script were good, though at times the acting was a bit over the top. The sound quality was weird at times, echoey and hard to understand.

Decent special effects but some props like the control panel were pretty bad ... like someone taped a bunch of iPads to it with abstract images being displayed, decided it didn't look "spacey" enough, and attached some obnoxiously flashing lights which obviously had no purpose beyond flashing constantly.

The plot was fairly well developed, and neither innovative or derivative. It was interesting enough to keep me watching it, but not very memorable. Basically a decent way to kill a couple hours.

It starts off watchable, albeit dull. When the low budget sfx for the outside of the ship and space look superior in realism to the inside of the ship, it is not hard to imagine that is only the beginning of the problems. I like sci fi movies, and I take the leap of the parameters they set up. This movie, though, just gets moronic. There are way too many times were this future spaceship doesn't even have the same obvious tech that was present a long time before today. Then, in the last 15 minutes or so, the movie just collapses at it tries to get the ending it wants when it had already painted itself into a different corner.

For a low budget movie, this film had great acting, an understandable plot, and believable dialogue -- for the first half of the film. The cinematography was very good considering the budget, except it was often way too dark, probably to hide the lousy sets. The score was pretty good, too. But those sets and props, wow, pretty bad. Clothes dryer vents hanging from the ceiling, and the crew was wearing 3M respirators freshly painted over with shiny spray paint and snow boots for their spacesuits. And the ship was held together with tapered wood screws!

Okay, they couldn't afford props. But as I said the acting was well above what you normally see in these cheap films. Plus there was actual character development -- the audience really got to know who those folks were on that spaceship. With real, natural dialogue.

But about midway through the film, it completely falls apart. It's like two different people wrote the first and second half of this film. It starts off as really great straight science fiction movie with a real, consistent plot and characters. Then halfway through, it turns into a snuff film. And the plot scenarios just kept getting more and more ridiculous -- one improbably situation after another. And in the second half of the film, none of the behaviours of the characters had any motivation or grounding in reality, whereas in the beginning, their actions were consistent with their characters and the situations they faced.

Another great thing about this film was that it was very progressive on race. This very small set of characters included a black man, and he had a romantic relationship with one of the (white) female astronauts. There wasn't any hint of derision or bias that I could detect. I'm adding a couple of points to my rating for this fair treatment of race.

My recommendation is to watch the first half of this film until they have the code orange. (It's explained in film -- it happens about half way through.) After that, just turn it off, and write your own ending. It has to be better than what they did to the second half of this film.

triggers: gory depictions of corpses; gory violence; gun (laser) violence

rating 7/10 (for the first half); (submitted July 5, 2020, 1:55 a.m. EDT)

I gave this B movie a chance because the trailer made it look like Sunshine or Event Horizon, but it's nothing like that. The characters talk for about an hour like a cheap TV show until something finally happens. The first 40 min could have easily been cut. But even after a little action finally happens, then it's back to more talking until the end of the movie. The trailer only shows that 5 minutes where something actually happens. But the actual movie is just people talking. The special effects are obviously bad, but they do the job. The actors are okay but the problem is that the script is awful. The plot is just not interesting and just tries to recycle better films. This is advertised as horror-sci-fi but it's not scary or even tense, there's just nothing happening, and even when you think something has happened, the big reveal is lame. It's more of a drama-sci-fi. Better just rewatch Event Horizon or Sunshine instead.

Truly awful. I just kept watching in disbelief just to see how bad it really was. Essentially a really low budget rip of sunshine, with some ships nicked from prometheus. But wthout any emotion, story. suspense, intrege, wonder, excitement or anything at all to justify the ninety minutes of life that you will never get back...

from me its gets a zero.