The Colony

An ice age has wiped out most of humanity, the last remaining survivors form small colonies, and trt to survive sickness, a virus that threatens to wipe out everyone. A distress call from a nearby colony brings a whole new level of threat.

I'll take into account the fact that this was a B movie when I do my review, clearly not a big budget blockbuster, more a c list sci fi clunker.

It's not bad film as such, but it's a close run thing. I liked the visuals, liked the acting and I felt it had a sense of atmosphere. The main problem, the story sucked, it just wasn't very interesting, it offered absolutely nothing new.

A good start, average middle, and an ending that came so abruptly, it hardly felt like a conclusion, it honestly felt like they simply ran out of either time or budget.

You never feel that you're into it, there's a lot happening, but it all feels disjointed, it doesn't flow. There are some nice action scenes, and the alien beings look pretty good.

I thought Dru Viergever was rather good as the leader of the alien marauders, he certainly looked the part, he had an imposing presence.

5/10.

When I first heard about this film I thought it was going to be like "It" (80's version, of course)or even "30 days of night". I love apocalyptic movies mixed with frozen world and eventually with monsters. Unfortunately, "The collony" turned to be another inconsistent and time- wasting entertainment movie. Yes, I'm talking about usual empty characters, boring plot and of course a good looking hero unable to express anything. A bit of action at the beginning but after knowing the villains you realize nothing good will come. Hollywood guys, please, you have huge resources, spend some more bucks on the script and on the casting and save on fx, anybody can create explosions on the computer but doing a good film is beyond that.

I hadn't even read the synopsis for the movie before picking it up at the local secondhand DVD store. All I saw was what looked like an arctic disaster movie and one that had both Bill Paxton and Laurence Fishburne on the cast list.

Director Jeff Renfroe manages to start out with a rather impressive feat of establishing a very interesting setting and a fair story, along with some detailed characters. But that all changed to the worse and the movie fell into mediocrity once it was revealed what had happened to the inhabitants of the neighboring colony. I just didn't like that approach to the story one bit, it was just ludicrous.

I liked the arctic setting of the movie, and the visual effects department did manage to make it look realistic and that did a lot for the movie. Because if a movie like this had poor effects and CGI it would just collapse like a poorly constructed card house.

Kevin Zegers didn't really have what it took to deliver in this movie, and as such then he wasn't a strong main actor for the movie, which did slow down the movie a bit. He is usually an adequate actor, but didn't really pull it off in "The Colony". It was without a doubt Bill Paxton who were the one carrying the movie, despite having only a secondary role in the movie. Laurence Fishburne was there simply because he is Laurence Fishburne.

It was a shame that director Jeff Renfroe opted for that approach to the incident of the neighboring colony, because it was a severe crippling blow to the movie. "The Colony" had potential, but it was abruptly cut down by the direction in which the story went.

I don't know what the makers were thinking, why will you cast Lawrence Fishburn if you're not going to use it in any meaningful way?.

The movie portraits humanity after the ice age has begun. The Colony only explains partially what happened to the planet and why we as humans destroyed it burning all the fossil fuel which contributed to a new ice age, all humanity is lost and the only remains are some "colonies" beneath the earth.

The starting point is quite good, the first minutes of the movie too. Although it is clichéd, it is standard sci-fi, it develop it's characters sufficiently enough but then.. it speeds up its downward spiral once the "enemies" appear on the scene.

The movie has an incredible change of pace once the enemies arrives with poorly execution on the director's side and just god awful fight scenes... Hardcore music and slaughter, i'm in the 80's again?, is this a joke?, I could accept that kind of embarrassment on a B low movie, I just can't accept it in a movie with Lawrence Fishburn that began as well as this one.

It's like the director throw away the script and said "just put the rock music and kill everyone, because that's cool!"... He appears to just shoot himself in the foot with the directing the movie takes.

It goes without saying that this was actually an incredible missed opportunity to tell a interesting story of the survivors of humanity... and a potential hope for the story.

The conclusion to this mess is, kill your opponents swiftly and survive.

I wanna kill myself for wasting all this time. How can they ruin their own potentially good story is beyond me. It seems Hollywood is full of stupid people that takes stupid decisions in the making of movies these days.

Avoid it, if you want to see killing, see it with some meaning added to it. If you want action and scares, go watch Dawn of the Dead, is 1000 times better than this horrendous mess.

This movie is suffering from what I'd like to call the Game of Thrones effect; the way the ending defines a person's lasting opinion regardless of what came before. GOT was freakin' amazing, but to many people it is a festering pool of lameness, because the last series (or 2) was written by a spoon.

The Colony is kinda the same. I can honestly say, for the entire first half of the movie I was thinking: this movie doesn't deserve a 5/10. It has a solid post-apocalyptic atmosphere, an interesting somewhat-innovative premise, decent acting, and an intriguing story with good tension building. The CGI was a bit weak in places, but I didn't care because I was adequately immersed. Reading the other reviews, I think most people felt the same. So 50% of this movie is a solid 7/10 ... for real post-apocalyptic fans maybe even an 8/10.

The problem is, after the real enemy is revealed, the tension rapidly drops away and a simple bland survival story begins. There's nothing at all innovative from here on. The action is underwhelming and the enemy is also underwhelming (but they're clearly not zombies as one reviewer thought). Sure, there are multiple holes in terms of realism and believability, but they're the same flaws 100 other higher scoring action movies have made. Also the possibility of the interesting apocalypse-reversal was not explored. Basically, it was just generic not-too-terrible lameness. This part of the movie was a disappointing 5/10.

So yes, as a result of the ending the overall experience is disappointing ... but honestly I think the first half was special enough to justify watching the movie, especially if you're a post-apoc fan. Sit down, forget the IMDB score, pretend it's a hidden gem, and enjoy the first 45 minutes. When you sense it's starting to get lame, which it unfortunately will, crack on with your doom scrolling or whatever you personally do when TV loses your attention.

This might seem like odd advice but IMO, as a post-apoc fan, the beginning has stayed with me somewhat and I feel it'd be a shame to not give it a go.