It isn’t exactly a herculean task to find an ambitious sci-fi thriller either in theaters or on VOD, but it is a great deal more difficult to find one that genuinely manages to match its aspirations. Based on the evidence, though, 2013’s The Colony resolutely failed to hit the remit.
A 20 percent Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t out of the unexpected when it comes to fairly lo-fi genre flicks that try to put a fresh spin on well-worn formulas, but it’s the 23 percent user average from over 5000 votes that arguably tells the real story. Even reliable veterans Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton couldn’t drag The Colony up to their level, which is very telling indeed.
Set in a decimated future ravaged by a new ice age, the dwindling number of human survivors are forced to fight tooth and nail just to keep on living in a cruel world, but when an investigation into a seemingly-abandoned colony goes awry, it becomes apparent that mother nature isn’t the only vicious opponent our heroes will need to defeat in order to see another sunrise.
At the end of the day, it’s pretty much another of the many underwhelming zombie thrillers to come along, except this time there’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi twist. That’s not really good enough to make up for the dreary dialogue and uninvolving plotting – even if some of the visuals are impressively polished – but broad duds with big names are about as bulletproof as it gets on streaming.
As a result, The Colony has been thawed out as one of the top titles on ad-supported platform Freevee per FlixPatrol, even if some things are better off left defrosted.
Published: Feb 2, 2023 01:26 pm