The Colony Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Colony Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 25, 2021

Are there top secret science fiction film screenings featuring stories offering horrible things happening to Earth which are being held in some perhaps unexpected global regions to attract potential licensors and/or distributors that Lionsgate has been attending recently? It certainly may seem like it, at least when considering the fact that on Lionsgate's current Blu-ray release schedule potential consumers can find both Warning, which has at least some Polish production personnel associated with it, and now The Colony, which features a cast and crew which includes Swiss-German co-writer and director Tim Fehlbaum, and an international cast whose only arguable "marquee" attraction for at least some potential viewers might be Iain Glen. The Colony probably trumps Warning in terms of overall narrative clarity, but it may suffer by being too reminiscent of any number of other "post Apocalyptic" dramas which see exiled Earthlings returning to their home planet to see if things are becoming inhabitable again. In a plot that might be deemed one part Children of Men (the former inhabitants of Earth who have vacated to a planet called Kepler 209 are now all infertile) and one part Waterworld (the original title of this film was evidently Tides, which alludes to the flooded state of Earth in its post Apocalyptic state), The Colony struggles to offer anything really new to this now pretty crowded subgenre, but it does benefit from some moody cinematography and generally committed performances.

The Colony begins with an abbreviated "text crawl" which is so short it doesn't actually move, and instead offers a bunch of sentence fragments and/or solo words letting the audience know things have gone from bad to worse on Earth (kind of like in Warning, as a matter of fact), and that as a result the "ruling elite" of the planet have escaped the carnage to inhabit Kepler 209, where they've been residing for two generations. However, their inability to reproduce as well as perhaps a bit of curiosity about what things are like "back home" has led to some missions to Earth to see what conditions are like. The first mission, dubbed Ulysses, ended in apparent failure when the landing party never reported back. Unfortunately, Ulysses 2 doesn't seem to be faring much better as the film opens, with the space capsule crashing into the sea, and with two of its three astronauts either killed or seriously injured in the process.

The lone astronaut able to get out and explore is Louise Blake (Nora Arnezeder), a character whose backstory is told in some fitful interstitial flashbacks featuring Blake as a young girl (Chloé Heinrich) interacting with her father (Sebastian Roché). In a linkage which probably pushes already dubious credibility past the suspension of disbelief point, it is slowly revealed that Blake's father was in fact aboard the first Ulysses mission, which of course gives her an "up close and personal" reason for getting out there into the misty, soggy environments of Earth to see if she can find him (three guesses on that one, and the first two don't count). In the meantime, she, along with her surviving but injured compatriot Tucker (Sope Dirisu), are accosted and captured by a roving band of near feral characters who again seem one part Waterworld and perhaps one part Mad Max. And right there is the major problem with The Colony: you've seen just about all of it before in other contexts.

While this "version" of things has some incredibly evocative cinematography, the plot just seems like a "one from Column A, one from column B" aggregation of ideas from a variety of other films, not necessarily limited to the three or so mentioned above. Even passing attempts at introducing a kind of socioeconomic aspect in terms of the roving bands of scavengers and their putative overlord Gibson (Iain Glen) seems almost deliberately evocative of some elements in Waterworld and Mad Max in particular. The making of supplement included on this disc gets into some of the subtext of the screenplay, including the wish that the Kepler survivors be relatively emotionless. That may help to explain a certain distance in the characterization of Blake at least, but there's also a really odd lack of emotion throughout this story, despite attempts at injecting ostensible (native) human emotion into things with the stories of some of the gang members Blake interacts with.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Colony is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The closing credits list both the Red camera and Hawk lenses, and both the IMDb and the website for production entity Vega mention a 4K DI (and/or DCP). The results are largely excellent, though as even a cursory parsing of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review will reveal, the aesthetic here is one drenched in grays and greens, with a surplus of mist and water, along with what looked to me like overt uses of diffusion filters, all of which give large swaths of this presentation a kind of hazy, almost slightly drugged out, appearance. As such, the palette rarely if ever "pops" in any traditional sense, and because of the overall grading choices, can only intermittently look like what might be termed "natural". That said, within the intentional confines of stylistic choices made here, suffusion is great, even if things are at times almost monochromatic. Detail levels can (sorry for the water pun) ebb and flow, due not just to grading choices, but because so much of the film plays out in very dim lighting conditions. One slight deficit in this regard is just a bit of a noisy appearance in some of the darkest material. There's still generally consistent fine detail on display throughout the presentation despite the lack of lighting and a bright and vivid palette. I was a bit worried, considering all the mist and fog in the film, that this transfer might exhibit the kind of sudden and strange occurrence of banding I've seen in some recent Lionsgate Blu-ray releases, but I noticed nothing of any import here.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It looks like The Colony may have been presented in Atmos in some markets, but this disc offers "only" a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though I have to say while a vertical element probably would have been exciting, what's here is remarkably forceful and well designed. The opening scenes of the capsule crash landing contain some floorboard rattling LFE, and a lot of the outdoor material offers smartly placed ambient environmental effects. Some of the actors have slight accents to contend with, but generally speaking dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director Tim Fehlbaum


• Visions of the Future: Making The Colony (HD; 19:26) is an agreeable enough EPK with some good interviews with the cast and crew, and quite a bit of candid footage thrown in for good measure.

Additionally a digital copy is included, and packaging offers a slipcover.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you have time for only one odd science fiction film with an international pedigree being presented by Lionsgate, I'd recommend starting with Warning, despite some admitted deficits I discuss in some detail in our Warning Blu-ray review. The Colony may simply try to cobble together too many ideas from too many other properties for its own good. The result isn't as slapdash as might be expected, but it's curiously uninvolving, though often rather moodily gorgeous to watch and listen to. Technical merits are solid for those who may be considering making a purchase.