Director and co-writer Daniel Fitzsimmons makes his interesting feature debut with a smart lo-fi sci-fi. It’s a claustrophobic chamber piece, occasionally opened out into weird interplanetary dreamscapes.
Fitzsimmons is making his production budget count, and he’s getting the most from his two actors: Ellie Kendrick and Rupert Graves, giving intelligent and committed performances. There are derivative touches here, taken from any and every post-Kubrick sci-fi you’ve ever seen, but the influences are capably absorbed and it reminded me very agreeably of the 70s TV show The Tomorrow People.
Kendrick and Graves play Eva and Kane – names with Biblical echoes – humanoid-looking creatures on a spaceship, who are in touch via telepathy with beings back at home who are at once their quasi-siblings and life partners carrying their children.
Kane and Eva’s mission is to colonise a certain familiar looking planet by landing and implanting a virus that will wipe out the indigenous populace. But halfway there, they start hearing the strains of Beethoven’s Fifth echoing across space – part of that intergalactic “greeting” message that Earth authorities launched long ago – and Kane starts having a crisis of empathy with those he’s supposed to colonise and crush. It’s elegant and weird.
