Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Stranded Blu-ray Movie Review

Stuck in Cliché

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 25, 2013

Director Roger Christian would no doubt prefer to be known as a member of the Academy Award-winning team that art-directed the first Star Wars, rather than the sucker whom John Travolta persuaded to direct Battlefield Earth (2000). For my own part, I prefer to think of Christian as the promising helmer of a creepy but little-seen 1985 thriller, The Sender, which starred Zeljko Ivanek (now an Emmy-winning character actor) as a young man with uncanny telepathic powers. Christian has been gamely trying to rehabilitate himself every since the Battlefield catastrophe. Unfortunately, Stranded won't help.

With a script by Christian and aspiring screenwriter Christian Piers Betley, who counts Tudor Gates (Barbarella) among his inspirations, Stranded is a thriller in space without a single original notion. It cheerfully recycles familiar elements from landmarks of sci-fi cinema, and lesser examples too, but adds nothing beyond minimally competent filmmaking and a few decent performances. Now, I'm all for competent filmmaking and decent performances, but if one is going to construct a story from building blocks that will constantly have viewers asking themselves, "Where have I seen that before?" (or worse: "That again?"), then the cinematic craftsmanship better be Kubrickian in its quality, and the performances should be Oscar-worthy. Otherwise, all the dark shadows, gloppy makeup and screaming fits in the world won't induce anything other than slumber.

Stranded takes place on the moon in 2027 at a mineral exploration base called "ARK". If an irony is intended by the name, I failed to find it. Unlike the mining operation in Duncan Jones's Moon (2009), this one has a staff of four. Col. Gerard Brauchman (Christian Slater) commands the station; Dr. Lance Krauss (Brendan Fehr) is the medical officer; and Bruce Johns (Michael Therriault) and Ava Cameron (Amy Matysio) are research scientists.

The film wastes no time on preliminaries. In the opening sequence, the station is heavily damaged by what appears to be a meteor shower, except that neither the station's radar nor ground control's monitoring devices detected the objects before they hit. The station's air filtration systems are wrecked, and the crew has only limited hours of good air. Communications are cut off, and Col. Brauchman can't be sure whether his request for immediate evacuation made it through before the antennae were destroyed. A single escape pod remains viable, but it only holds two.

As the crew labors to shore up the station and extend their remaining oxygen, Cameron comes upon a meteor fragment that, to her eyes, looks "organic". Her natural reaction is to bring the object inside the remaining habitable areas of the station, where, if it is organic, it will pose the greatest possible threat. Dr. Krauss is equally fascinated. He takes the "rock" to his lab, where he breaks it apart and discovers living tissue inside, which he calls "spores". After taking a sample, he isolates the object in a containment chamber, where the spores grow at a phenomenal rate. Meanwhile, Cameron attempts to analyze the sample, but cuts herself on a broken test tube. Showing the same lack of judgment as when she brought the rock inside in the first place, she says nothing about possibly being infected.

In short order, the alien spores have used Cameron as a vehicle for assuming human form. As the alien continues to grow and change, its objective becomes clear. It wants to eliminate the crew of ARK, then escape to earth. What happens next is anyone's guess, but it probably won't be good for the human race. The life form gets a lot of unexpected help from the colonel and the doctor in the form of disbelief whenever Cameron or Johns tries to tell either of them about the strange creature they've seen lurking in the shadows or disappearing into a vent or service tunnels. They chalk up these wild stories to hallucinations caused by the rapidly deteriorating atmosphere, which is filling up with "carbon monoxide". (Everyone always says "carbon monoxide". In fact, their problem should be carbon dioxide. The other one would simply kill them. Quickly.) The skepticism of the doctor and the colonel are especially absurd, given that they've watched Cameron go through remarkable changes that should be impossible, but clearly happened—and the doctor himself has commented on the remarkable properties of the "spores". But the script requires them to behave as if they're incapable of drawing any connection between the strange things they've seen for themselves and the ones they're now hearing from their colleagues.

If much of this "infestation" plot sounds like Christian and Betley have studied Alien, it's because they obviously have. They've also watched John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), the David Cronenberg version of The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (especially Philip Kaufman's 1976 remake), Peter Hyams' 1980 Outland (for one scene especially) and even that lesser contribution to the genre, Roger Donaldson's 1995 film, Species). One can watch Stranded while ticking off the boxes as each borrowed scene comes and goes: "Seen it. Been there. Done that. It was better the first time."

The cast does the best they can. Therriault and Matysio do a credible job of acting terrified and discombobulated, while Slater and Fehr have the much harder job of behaving with willful stupidity. "Scientists!" Slater's Col. Brauchman exlaims in disgust, when his colleagues run off to waste valuable time analyzing a rock that hit their station. At least he has the excuse of being a military officer. Dr. Krauss has no such excuse.

Stranded Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Stranded was photographed on the Red system by Mark Dobrescu, who has done a lot of second unit work on films such as The Messengers. After passing through a digital intermediate and on to Image/RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray (presumably with no intervening analog stage), Dobrescu's work comes through cleanly and clearly—but also very dark. Most of the film occurs in low light after the meteor shower has destroyed the outpost's power grid, so that many scenes are dominated by dark blues and greens and deep blacks. Shadow detail is quite good where you're supposed to see it, but frequently you're not supposed to see anything at all, except for figures in the foreground where the immediate action is occurring. One advantage of this approach is that it stretches the limited budget, because distant expanses of set can be left with minimal set dressing.

When you're looking at what's been lit to draw your eye, what's there is finely detailed with little or no noise or interference. Faces, cockpit and corridor instruments, personal items in crew quarters and gloppy alien parts can be readily discerned. The 88-minute film (with about 20 minutes of extras in 1080p) fits neatly onto a BD-25.

One further visual element merits mention. As detailed in the special effects extra, Christian made the decision to use miniatures rather than CG to create the exteriors of the ARK moon installation. This no doubt was a throwback to his days working on Star Wars, and it certainly makes sense on a low-budget film. Elsewhere I've expressed my affection for model work, but it has generally been accompanied by shooting on film and compositing via optical dupe. These techniques may be inseparable from the successful use of models. At the very least, effects technicians and cinematographers need more experimentation to perfect the process for digital cinema. When they're properly done, models aren't supposed to announce themselves as such, but my first thought when Stranded began was: "Hey, look at all the models."

Stranded Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Stranded's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track has much of the impact and detail that one expects from a contemporary soundtrack. The opening meteor bombardment of the moon station is loud and powerful and puts the sounds of destruction throughout your viewing room. After the station's decimation, sounds of steam, alarms, shifting metal and everything broken are everywhere. Bass extension is deep, and near the end there are several events that use it effectively. The score by Todd Bryanton (The Tall Man ) is forgettable, but it gets the job done during the movie.

Stranded Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Stranded: (1080p; 1.78:1; 14:53): This standard EPK features interviews with all four cast members as well as writer/director Christian, co-writer Betley and various crew members. The most interesting part is the origin of the project, but once the cast takes over, they fall into the standard rhythm of praising each other and the director.



• Life on the Moon: The FX of Stranded (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:32): This short focuses on the work of makeup effects artist Emersen Ziffle, as well as the model effects that created the exteriors of the moon base.



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Evidence, The Colony and The Tall Man. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Stranded Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Stranded is a capably produced Blu-ray, but it has nothing to recommend it as a thriller, a horror film or a space adventure. If you're truly curious, rent it.