Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Colony Blu-ray Movie Review

Revolt!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 14, 2013

Despite impressive production values and the presence of stars Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton, The Colony was poorly received in its native Canada in April 2013 and fared even worse during a brief tour in U.S. theaters the following September. It would be easy to explain the film's failure, as some critics did, by dismissing dystopian sci-fi thrillers as an exhausted genre. Imagining humanity's bleak future is a vein that has been thoroughly mined. If one is going to stake a new claim, there had better be more to show for the effort than a few fragments left over from earlier prospectors. Unfortunately, the script, from an original story by Patrick Tarr and Pascal Trottier, revised by director Jeff Renfroe and Svet Rouskov, borrows shamelessly from earlier, better sources, leaving the viewer with a permanent sense of déjà vu throughout The Colony's running time.

(Spoiler alert: In order to provide an overview of The Colony, the following discussion reveals a few plot points. Any reader who wishes to see the film "cold" should skip this section.)

In 2045, the earth is a snow-covered wasteland, in part as a result of a failed experiment in weather control. The ruins of massive control towers can be made out in the snow, along with remnants of cities, bridges and other wreckage of civilization. Small groups of survivors have gathered in shelters adapted from abandoned structures, where they live in constant peril from the ravages of common diseases such as the flu, because medical supplies have been exhausted.

Colony 7 was established in a bunker under the command of Briggs (Fishburne), a former military officer who saw too much savagery in the last days of the old civilization and is determined to run Colony 7 as humanely as possible. When a resident of the colony becomes ill, he or she is placed in quarantine and given an opportunity to recover. If no recovery occurs (and it never does), the patient is offered a choice between suicide by walking into the freezing wilderness or a quick death by bullet.

Briggs' former subordinate, Mason (Paxton), is weary of such niceties. In an early sequence, he makes a colonist's choice for him, to the horror of young Sam (Kevin Zegers), an orphan who works in the science labs and considers Briggs a surrogate father. The labs are the heart of Colony 7. There the colonists work at preserving seeds of as many species of fruits and vegetables as possible, in case the sun ever reappears and melts the snow. They're also trying to sustain a few domestic animals, like chickens and rabbits, with increasingly little success.

An argument between Briggs and Mason over Mason's methods is interrupted by a distress call from Colony 5. Briggs, Sam and another young colonist named Graydon (Atticus Dean Mitchell) undertake the hazardous journey on foot to the former factory buried under the snow where Colony 5 resides and discover that it has been invaded by an entirely different group of survivors: a roving band of vicious, feral humans who have turned to murder and cannibalism. Anyone familiar with Joss Whedon's Serenity will recognize them as a cut-rate version of that story's Reavers.

The attackers found Colony 5 when it sent scouts looking for the source of a transmission from people who claimed to have repaired a weather control station and opened a hole for the sun to penetrate earth's cloud cover. The scouts were attacked and fled back to Colony 5, with the attackers in hot pursuit. Now, they trail the rescue party back to Colony 7, despite the rescuers' heroic attempts, first, to contain them and then to cut them off. Will Colony 7 survive and, if so, can the colonists get their precious seeds to a patch of sunlight that will make them grow?

Borrowing liberally from every zombie franchise ever created, including the promise of a distant oasis familiar from the Resident Evil series and 28 Days Later, Renfroe and his team also plunder elements from Aliens, the aforementioned Serenity, Terminator Salvation and The Day After Tomorrow. Even the chilly sensation cast over the entire movie by cinematographer Pierre Gill is reminiscent of a similar effect achieved (with more traditional means) by Dean Cundey in John Carpenter's The Thing.

The most original element in The Colony is the visual depiction of Colony 7, because the filmmakers gained access to a recently decommissioned NORAD base in Ontario. Built deep inside a mountain, the base offered huge tunnels and cavernous chambers that provided instant production value. The early scenes inside Colony 7 are the film's best simply because they are set inside a world that's visually intriguing and that your eye can tell has not been created primarily in the digital domain. These are also the scenes devoted to exploring the colonists' survival strategies and the romantic relationship, such as it is, between Sam and Kai (Charlotte Sullivan), the guardian of the colony's supplies. It is Kai who Briggs leaves in charge when he leads the rescue mission to Colony 5, much to the annoyance of Mason, but the conflict is never fully developed.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cinematographer Pierre Gill (Outlander) shot The Colony with the Arri Alexa. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, which would have been necessary even if it were not now standard practice, given the enormity of the digital effects. (Examples of the green screen work appear in the extras.) RLJ/Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has presumably been sourced from digital files, and its image retains the crisp detail and lack of noise, but without any digital harshness, for which the Alexa is noted. Blacks are inky, and the predominant palette is the steely blue of the now-frozen earth, with occasional interruptions by warmer tones in those portions of Colony 7 where good people like Kai have managed to preserve some semblance of humanity.

The average bitrate of 21.00 Mbps might be cause for concern in a production originated on film, but it's acceptable for digital origination, though I wish it were somewhat higher, since Image's customary BD-25 isn't even filled to capacity. Still, no obvious compression artifacts appeared.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it effectively immerses the listener in the freezing winds and snows of this bleak world's perpetual winter. The interiors of the various colonies have different sonic qualities, depending on the location, with Colony 7's cavernous spaces sounding huge and open and Colony's 5's enclosures sounding more like factories and warehouses. Crossings on a massive but derelict girder bridge provide some unusual sonic moments, and an attack on Colony 7 by an unexpected route brings booms that echo to and from various parts of the listening space. Gunshots are distinctive, but none of the weapons involved are powerful enough for the kind of over-the-top wallop of an action movie; like the colonists themselves, these weapons are just managing to get by. More impressive are the screams and yells of the attackers, who seem to have resurrected the ancient art of the war cry (with help from the sound effects team).

Dialogue is clear throughout, and the score by Jeff Danna (Resident Evil: Apocalypse and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) is effective and energetic.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes Interviews with Cast and Crew (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:50): This short EPK allows Renfroe to explain his approach to the film both as writer and as director. It was his idea to make Sam the story's hero and tell it from his point of view. Cinematographer Gill describes some of his visual strategies, and actors Fishburne, Paxton, Zegers and Sullivan discuss their roles.



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for The Numbers Station, Evidence and Blood. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Colony Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Colony is a perfectly harmless way to pass an afternoon or evening, but it's instantly forgettable and doesn't bear rewatching, despite a solid Blu-ray treatment. A rental is all it's worth, and even then expectations should kept low.