Tags:
Film: The Colony
Year: 2013
Director: Jeff Renfroe
Writer: Jeff Renfroe, Svet Rouskov, Patrick Tarr and Pascal Trottier
Starring: Kevin Zegers, Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton
Review:
This film begins in a bunker of some sort with two people running. They are scared and they hit a locked door. They start pounding on it and it cuts away.
We then get a group of people coming outside. The world is desolate, it is snowing and that is all you see for miles. A man is shoved out into snow and there are two men that are doing the pushing. One of them is played by Bill Paxton. He has a gun and he going to execute the man in the snow. We learn it is because the man in the snow is sick. He has been quarantined, he has failed the test and flu spreads throughout the group without these precautions. We learn the last flu wiped many of them out.
Our main character is Kevin Zegers and he tells Paxton that the man has a choice to be executed or to let walk to find his own way. Paxton tells him that he will come back anyways and shoots him.
Zegers goes inside and meets with a few different people. The leader of the colony is played by Laurence Fishburne. He sets up a meeting for everyone to attend as they’ve learned there is something wrong with another colony. Zegers tells Fishburne about what happened outside with Paxton. We learn that the colony is self-sufficient with animals, plants that are grown and they are careful to perverse seeds.
Zegers stops by where they are keeping the animals to learn that there is something wrong with the rabbits. The last litter was all still-borne and they only have one female left. Zegers goes to where the seeds and animal food is kept. The woman that runs it is played by Charlotte Sullivan. She is seeing Zegers as they really are each other’s only option. He gets food for the rabbits.
Fishburne tells the rest of the colony what he knows about what has happened at the other one. He decides that a group will go to check out the problem. Paxton is against this idea. Fishburne asks for two volunteers, Zegers is one of them and the son of the man who cares for the animals is the other, this guy is played by Atticus Dean Mitchell. Fishburne makes Sullivan the leader while he is gone, much to the disappointment of Paxton. They also share words about what happened outside. Fishburne scolds Paxton and he takes a dig at Fishburne. Also a colonist sneezes and goes into a coughing fit. She and her husband are immediately taken into quarantine. Paxton wants them executed immediately, but Fishburne won’t have it. That night Zegers has a nightmare of him being lost in the snow and looking down to see a woman who is dead.
They set off for the other colony and we learn about the outside world. We burned up more fossil fuels and then it started to snow one day. It has never stopped. There is something about towers being built to control the weather, but it doesn’t go into that much. They cross a lot of snowy plains and cross a bridge that is falling apart. They end up staying the night in a downed helicopter where Fishburne tells a little of his past and Zegers tells how he was found. They radio in and get an update of the colony. They tell them they will make their destination the next day.
Once they do, they find blood on the snow. They enter through one of the smoke stacks to find the place empty. They hear knocking and they look for who is making it. Mitchell is scared and he has to be told to grow a backbone. They end up finding a locked door where they think the banging is coming from. They unlock it to find a man hiding inside; he is played by Julian Richings. He tells them to lock the door. He says that they came and killed everyone. When asked who they are, he doesn’t know. Richings does show them a transmission they received about one of the weather towers being reversed and they’ve thawed out their area. This gives hope to the three, as they’ve been saving seeds.
They then hear weird noises and Fishburne tells everyone to grab what they can carry and they are getting out. Richings doesn’t want to go, but they force him toward the door.
The three exit and Richings locks himself in. The rest go searching for what they heard. They find the rest of the colonists, dead. They are being chopped up and ate by another group of people, cannibals. Their leader is played by Dru Viergever. They chase after the three. In the room Fishburne found some dynamite and he uses some now to get separation.
On their escape, Mitchell is killed. Fishburne and Zegers get outside and Fishburne uses more dynamite to seal the smokestack. They make it back to the helicopter for the night.
The next morning they see they are still being chased. Will Fishburne and Zegers be able to make it back to the colony? Will they lead the group of cannibals right to their hideout? Will the colony be the same as before they left? Or will Paxton finally get the power he wanted?
First off I wanted to say that I loved the concept of this movie. A belief is that global warming is going to lead us into another ice age. We learn what happened to the world and how they’ve been able to survive it. I love that something as minor as colds and flus are the biggest problem they are dealing with so far. We also get to see the breakdown of human nature and what happens because of it. There is good acting that makes the bleak existence seem more real.
My problem with this film is that we didn’t get a lot of information on the weather towers. After they brought them up, I was wondering why nobody tried to fix them. We learn that is what saved one area, so why hadn’t others tried. I needed more info as to why it wasn’t done to get me more into this. I also think they rushed past the part with the cannibals too much and didn’t get enough of them for my liking.
With that said, I think this is a good post-apocalyptic movie. We have the world being too cold, forced underground, but they are surviving. What they are doing is realistic and the interaction of the characters helps with that. The acting is good and the story is solid as well. They give a lot of good backstory, but I wanted more there in some parts. I also wanted more between the colonists and the cannibals. Still I would say to give this one a viewing, not a bad horror, sci-fi, survival film.
My Rating: 6 out of 10