Star Trek: Horizon

It's hard to decide what rating to assign to this Kickstarter-funded Star Trek fan film. The fact that it's been done on an absolute shoe-string budget by commercial Hollywood standards plus that the crew and cast are amateurs means that one is inclined to be generous with the critique.

However, a movie deserves an honest review no matter who made it and I wouldn't want to be generous to the point of patronising.

Given the humble resources from which it was created, this is really quite a good film. Okay yes, the acting is a little awkward and the dialogue a bit stilted. But lest we forget, some of the original Star Trek cast were a bit hammy (I'm looking at you, Shatner). It also has a tiny cast, so you don't really get the sense of Starfleet...more a sort of Starsquad. Overall, though, it's a huge leap forward from earlier fan film efforts.

Unsurprisingly, the film relies heavily on CGI just like its commercial cousins. What is surprising is that it's mostly quite well done, especially the spacecraft. Mostly.

By far, by a veritable country mile, the worst thing about this movie is that it's absolutely saturated with lens flares and an almost constant soft-focus haze - perhaps to help disguise the imperfections in the background CGI or scenery? From what I could tell in the few scenes where the blur and lens flares weren't dialled up to eleven, it still looked okay so I really think it was a mistake to go so overboard with the visual distortions.

This is especially unfortunate because this movie almost...almost...had me suspending belief and becoming immersed but the god-awful continued glare and flare visual overlays just kept breaking the mood.

Final verdict? A flawed but nonetheless very impressive fan film. I doff my hat to Tommy Kraft, his cast and crew.

I'm old enough to remember when Star Trek first came out, and I thought it was fantastic. I was ten years old and easy to impress. This movie has some of those same qualities, it looks cheap, sounds cheap and for what it is not a bad job overall.Yes it has its flaws but it also has its strengths. All in all not bad, considering.

Filled with errors and stilted dialogue, this effort by fans is laudable in its vision. But shaky cam and haze doesn't a good film make.

Star Trek: Horizon lacks the grandeur of the feature films: there is no grand stage and Shakespeare feel. What made ST: TWOK great isn't here. There isn't a cracked mirror to see ourselves make things worse: there are ill-fitting uniforms, wooden performances and a very weak enemy. The Romulan Admiral shows how a twenty-something might react to adversity, and probably because the actor playing him is still in his teens.

Here's an example of poor writing: Captain Whatsisname orders the crew to abandon ship. But of course, no one does.

The ship is out of the fracas: shaky cam is still shivering, swaying and generally producing mal-de-mer.

The film would have been better to curb the enthusiasm, spend a little more time on plot, story and dialogue. Who's at fault? The director of course. It *looks* OK on the surface mostly. The CGI effects are compelling, the sets look good, the sound is mostly good. But there is no reason to go beyond the first forty minutes.

Lucky for us it's a freebie.

If I had to rate this along side official Star Trek productions, I would say it falls right in the middle. Much better than the really bad official stuff, but not as good as some of the best Trek out there.

In fact, my only complaint has to do with the videography. There appears to be this ambient haze everywhere, especially inside of ships. I don't know if this is a result of green-screen usage, or just creative license. But I didn't like it. I kept thinking "Why is the ship always full of fog?" But it certainly wasn't a deal-breaker. Really a minor nit-pick more than anything.

The characters and acting seemed different from regular Star Trek, but not necessarily bad. In fact, I'd say these characters were more like real people.

I am so amazed at all the work that goes into making a fan film. This is one of the best I've seen. This film was made to tie up some loose ends caused by the cancellation of Enterprise. It was very well done and made to look very professional. The special effects and story line complemented each other and it seemed like most of the characters played off each other very nicely. Some people seem to go above and beyond to critique the acting, story, cgi, etc... for those of you who do, why bother watching at all? Me, I am happy to no end that people give their time, talent and money to put together a quality film that could have actually been made into an episode.