Not the planet - the movie. Okay, those 'worst movie ever seen' type reviews - however strong the urge to do them - are not particularly helpful, and are probably not true anyway. There is plenty of big-budget Hollywood fare which can seriously lay claim to such an accolade, and have far less excuse than this one. So, I decided to give this a chance, on the basis that every movie has some flaw somewhere, and you can't just write something off unless you've made an effort to bathe yourself in the premise, characters, script, effects, tone and hell even the music. So...
Premise: nothing wrong with that, in fact quite engaging. Humans flee the apocalypse on Earth and find themselves having to survive on a hostile alien world, after crash-landing for some unknown reason (hence mystery too). Characters mostly somewhat feeble, without depth and not particularly believable - but this is where script meets *acting*. We know these are not A-list stars, but this is not fatal if the dialogue and writing are good. They're not, they're barely above student standard at best. And at worst, well... as TNG's Data would say, "my feelings can't be hurt", so here goes... the best thing I can say about the android in *this* film is that he makes me truly appreciate the quality of Brent Spiner's acting. As for the effects, I'm afraid it's one apocalypse too far, totally destroying any chance of getting emotionally engaged in the situation or believing in the setting.
Music is always important, and can even make or break, so it mystifies me why low-budget movies so often accept low-budget film music composition. This is one prime example of where skill could compensate for lack of resources. Obviously they cannot afford John Williams or Vangelis, but they don't have to: there's a galaxy of great classical music or even old pop out there which is past the copyright date, and intelligent use of this could raise the tone. Instead, we have vapid 'all-action' music inflicted on us, which has nothing other-worldly evocative about it and does the exact opposite of providing the tension they seem to think it provides. It's as if, here, all they want to do is confirm to us that this is a cheap action-pic (as opposed to engrossing sci-fi drama).
Not the worst movie I've ever seen, but quite simply the worst CGI; technically, many other B-moves have just as awful, but not where it's so integral to the plot, eg a planet under attack and peril from alien monsters. Those aspects have to be portrayed some other way if the effects at your disposal are so unconvincing. I'd have been willing to give it more than a 4 if not for this. If creating a low-budget movie, someone has to have the skill and judgement to side-step ruinous CGI, as well as compensating for mediocre actors by writing great dialogue and maintaining plot tension. And no, an exotic alien world romance in a lagoon cannot save this either. Even if it could, I was killed off before then by the alleged 'dragon'. No danger of a spoiler, because I was simply too bored to continue to the end; and that's the bottom line - a 'survival' movie (with a sci-fi setting watched by a sci-fi fan) where I wasn't interested enough to see who survived. I dug out my latest recording of a Star Trek TNG episode instead.
PS: by the time I'd finished editing, I'd reached the end, the movie playing the background! An extremely intelligent ending, but an opportunity for a film of sci-fi greatness lost by all the pitfalls of the low-budget industry, and lack of creativity to get round this. I'd like to see the big boys do any better, though, all to often they don't. So I'm promoting this to a '5'.
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