Of all the things that can make a movie good or bad, the budget is usually the least of them. Aronofsky made a near perfect movie on thousands of dollars while Verhoven and Sommers have made pathetic ones on hundreds of millions. What it really depends on is how good the story and storyteller are and whether or not the filmmakers know how to work within their means. "Strange Horizons" (which I watched on video as "Project: Genesis") has a modest budget and is very modest about using it. There are about five characters (including a talking computer) and two extras.
I tried to view this as a b-movie (and later as a serious one) and it didn't work out so well. All it has for b science fiction fans is a bad talking computer, an extremely weak space battle, and some female nudity. Unfortunately this movie aspires to be more than a b-movie and fails. Probably the best part of the movie is the lead actor's continuous Mickey Rourke impression.
A previous poster said this film is what science fiction is supposed to be. I didn't find the small story in "Strange Horizons" to be strictly science fiction. More than anything, it is a play. It's a story of a burned out ex-military man who blew the whistle on his drug-smuggling superior and winds up a drunken Robinson Crusoe... until this "alien" woman shows up. There's nothing wrong with a movie that talks a lot, but this movie really does nothing else. Other filmmakers might have found a way to create something of the future world that is continually described (or at least show more of the planet our hero crashes on than his wrecked spaceship), but in this case we get a closely cropped play shot on two obvious sets. This thing might have been passable on stage, but not in the movies.
The filmmakers tried to tell a good story, but they wrote a short play and not a movie. In either case re-writing would be necessary. My advice to them is to show a little more imagination in the future and perhaps suggest to an audience that horizon isn't just an imaginary drug.
