Z/Web

For some reason I got the idea that this was based on a video game, perhaps because the promos reminded me of Resident Evil. But it seems to be an original story. The film takes place in the future on a space ship and it’s dark and spooky and there are mutant creatures wanting to kill you. While there are one or two actual scares, mostly this film seeks to gross you out, with characters finding themselves in claustrophobic situations face-to-face with gory corpses and swimming in putrid waste. It’s pretty yucky and combined with 95% of the film being in the dark with eerie glow sticks the only light and it’s not a pleasant film. It is interesting, and quite well done, though it’s also over-done. The plot’s too gimmicky, purposely holding back information to keep us in the dark, and there’s an attempt for a “twist” at the end that’s obvious a mile away. The basic plot is two guys way up from hypersleep with no memories, no idea how long they’ve been asleep, and a ship that’s on life support. They can’t even open the door to get out as there is no power. The quest to restore power is the story, as one of the men goes on a journey to do that, running into the strange creatures and a few crazy passengers. The title is apparently the name of a condition we’ll call “space madness” — not exactly original. That’s actually one of the key flaws of the film because while the film is supposedly about paranoia, 80% of the time is spent running from the creatures and trying to figure out the “mystery” of the ship (which is not much of a mystery at all). I would have by far preferred a story exclusively about paranoia: adding in the creatures makes this a monster movie, which is not nearly as interesting. Unfortunately, the paranoia stuff is give short shrift and that’s disappointing (for terrific paranoia films, see Bug or Roman Polanski’s Repulsion).

The bottom line is this is a decent thriller. It is much more limited in scope than it could have been, but people who like this kind of genre will like it. I did, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone as it is gory and violent and depressing and not everyone likes such things. It could have been better but is above average for this kind of film.