GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Michael Ledo The film opens as a prepper's orgasm. 400 hundred people live underground in a self sufficient colony. The world has been hit by climate change, famine, and disease. Apparently the flu virus survives year round frozen temperatures. People who have a disease, are killed or forced to leave the colony to prevent infection. Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) is in charge of the colony. His antagonist is Mason (Bill Paxton) a man who has his own, less humane set of survival ethics.When an incident happens at Colony 5 (they are #7) Briggs takes off to investigate along with Sam (Kevin Zegers) plus token landing party victim.The post apocalyptic scenery was good. The acting was good. The plot didn't really go anywhere that I found interesting. I don't want to give a lot away, but they spent a lot of time building Sam's character for him to be the most boring of the lot. Things do pick up when they get to Colony 5, but it was too late in the film for them to finally introduce the action scenes.Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

infinitejourneys First third of movie was alright. Rest was terrible. I had some hope for this movie since I like these actors, but it was so disappointing that I feel I have to say something. Spoilers ahead. Reasons why this movie stinks: First of all, someone with the type of military training that Fishbourne's character supposedly has would never be so stupid as to take two kids to check out what happened to a colony of 50 people that suddenly went silent except for a distress signal. Leaving Paxton's character behind even though he has military training and then asking civilians to stop him with little to no training, was just colossally stupid. Hate to say it, but he deserved to die. Oh, and when a colony of 50 people goes silent and all you find at the entrance are pools of blood, only a total moron goes in with a couple of kids and such limited weapons.Telling the kid to grow a spine because he had enough intelligence to know it was a dumb idea is the worst. Gee, wonder what happened here...50 people couldn't handle it, but these two kids and I will save them!!! Right.Second, why couldn't they do a better job with Paxton? It was a lazy casting decision. "Hey, we don't have to build the character so much if we get a guy who has experience playing jerks because the audience will buy into it more easily."Third, if you have a massive structure made of concrete and steel, and you're able to make the whole thing collapse, burying cannibal-vampire- wannabes at the bottom under tons of debris, they aren't coming after you unless they are really vampires. But these jokers aren't. They're just really stupid cannibals who wish they were vampires.Fourth, if you blow up a bridge over a huge icy chasm that clearly requires the stupid cannibals chasing you to spend perhaps days going around the long way, I'm pretty certain they'd be like, "Forget this. Don't we have a bunch of meat back at the last place we trashed? Maybe we should just go eat that." But maybe they used some rope to get across? No, they aren't that smart. Besides, if they did do that, they would've caught the kid before he had a chance to collapse in front of his home base. But wait, they must've climbed down into the chasm so they could wander around in the snow until they found Captain Dynamite's head to shove at the camera when they caught up to the kid and his colony. Yay!Fifth, Paxton's character was a dufus who decided to go psychotic for reasons. Even when things seemed to be going downhill, he repeatedly made the worst possible choices. "Hey, whatever happened to them resulted in the death of my old military buddy, but this kid is lying or delusional because reasons." "Hey, even though I saw some awful stuff and came here with my pal to make sure nothing like that ever happened again, I'm somehow just a general scumbag."Sixth, chief stupid-cannibal-vampire-wannabe always happens to somehow avoid getting killed, even though he's quite often near the front of the action. If that were all, it would be terrible enough to ruin the movie. However, that isn't all at all. Somehow, when Paxton's character blows up what appears to be a propane tank, the explosion blows the chief idiot into the ducts behind the fleeing characters so he can continue pursuit. This is the worst decision in movies since having Legolas surf/skate in LOTR. Seventh, no, just no. Eighth, "Hey, these people with clear skies have no seed to sustain them. But grabbing 2 or 3 jars of random seeds will save us all!" "Hey, Paxton is a jerk, but let me give him my gun because reasons." "Hey, we're inside a huge structure made of concrete and steel, but we can hear a couple of dudes banging on the front door throughout the colony like the entire structure is a tin can" "Hey, did we really just abandon all those bodies (50) we just butchered at the last place so we could hunt down this kid and the ten people with him?"

Tweetienator Many bad reviews but I gotta confess - I liked it. True is, The Colony doesn't invent the wheel new and the story told is maybe a little too standard but what we get is a decent post-apocalyptic flick set in a world after a new ice age hit Earth with some action and good production and solid acting. If you like movies like The Book of Eli, The Road or The Day etc. this may be a movie for you - Snowpiercer got a bigger production value and the more crazy storyline, but well, not one of the mentioned movies is imo superb like Max Rockatansky's adventures in the Australian Outback, but all are entertaining. The Colony - a good one-timer for the lover of the world after the great fall.

Mac Flagg NO SPOILERS HERE: A review without a plot summary.How do movies like this get made? I mean, with all the money involved, doesn't someone stop and actually look at the product?Fist off, the script. It must be said that if a plot has to rely on the main characters making a litany of stupid mistakes to move it forward, then its probably not a great, well thought out story to begin with...and that's exactly what we have here with The Colony. There are countless places in the film where the story would have ended abruptly, if only the characters made a good decision. Using character stupidity as a major plot device, in a movie of this genre, is just lazy writing/filmmaking, plain and simple.The script is also ripe with over used horror troupes, which simply fall flat in the modern era of cinema. Audiences have just become to sophisticated for paint-by-numbers suspense for it to cause anxiety, fear, or thrills, simply because it's so predictable. Again, lazy writing/filmmaking.The story also lacks a well defined main theme, whether it be life in an post-apocalyptic earth, a treat from an outside source, or finding salvation. Without direction, the movie as a whole feels empty and meaningless.There is almost no character development. The story is imbalanced, in that, so much time is spent on the journey to and from a location in the film, there's no real time for the audience to get to know and care about the characters. Bill Paxton's character is way underdeveloped and underutilized. Laurence Fishburne's character was only fleshed out enough to be serviceable, but the audience feels not real connection to him, or any of the other characters for that matter. Therefore, it is difficult for the viewer to realty care about any of their fates. Hence, when one of the main characters dies, it carries no emotional impact.The bad force in the film is given no explanation, no back story, and it is very hyperbolic, to the point its almost cartoonish, where it loses its intended impact...especially during the climax if the film.The special effects in the film are only serviceable, as they're just a step above video game quality. This wouldn't have been so bad, if it weren't for the directors Peter Jacksonesque camera sweeps around and above some of the larger digital set pieces.The none of the actors gave memorable performances. Many of the actors seemed to just, "phone it in," as if this film was nothing more than a payday.The cinematography does achieve the feeling of vast openness of the outdoor set pieces. However, the film fails to produce the feeling of true isolation or the claustrophobic effects of living underground.If one could turn back the clock to 1987 and this were a made for TV movie, then it might have been something. But, this film was released in theaters 2013, so it fails to impress. Though, this isn't a film I'd place on the Worst Movies of All Time list, there's nothing worthy about it to make it worth recommending, even if its on Netflix and its a lazy Sunday. There are far better ways to waste your time.