I thought this movie was OK-if you're stuck home sick. It had a good SF premise but it fell apart somehow. They opened the film with a scene of someone falling through empty space-exactly the way the film Predators opens. It shares other similarities with Predators in that some of the "aliens" look like they wandered in from a set of the film Predators. No matter-it was made for light Saturday afternoon viewing anyway, so what the hey. The female lead was in good shape- looking like she had just trained for a Triathlon, which is something you don't see very often in contemporary SF. Good ending-I was expecting a poor one since it became kind of a 'monster mash' somewhere towards the end. All in all it doesn't work as big screen material for one reason or another but it works as a film to watch if you are under the weather. Thats all I got.
Add a Review
-
lois-lane3320 October 2014
-
bowmanblue16 March 2015Oh, dear... where to begin. 'Cheap' is the word I'd use to describe 'Survivor.' Even the title is hardly inspired. I ran the word 'survivor' through the Internet Movie Database's search to try and find this film, but there are so many other films/TV shows called it, that I had to end up looking it up via an actor's name. In fact, the searching for it online was actually more enjoyable than the film.
Okay, that maybe a little harsh, but it was just so cheap it was hardly worth bothering with. It's about (and I can barely be bothered to regurgitate it all again!) the last few survivors from a doomed Earth, now destined to fly through space while they search for a new home planet. The spaceships all look computer-generated, but that doesn't last long. The ship soon crashes and they have to survive on an inhospitable planet. Or at least one of them does. A lone girl has to basically fight through hordes of native humans (and later monsters) to try and rescue the few remaining crewmates who survived the crash.
It basically plays out like 'After Earth' but with less of a budget. Then again, After Earth hardly set the Box Office on fire, so that is a strange film to base another one on! Later on the cast moves to underground and, what with the inclusion of the monsters, it ends up a bit like 'The Descent.' Even sci-fi fans won't really enjoy this film. It's just too cheap and too unoriginal to really offer anything new. Yeah, if you're really that bored on a Saturday afternoon and you come across this film on TV (no way you would ever feel justified in paying for it!) you may just sit through it. Only if you're bored though. Really bored. -
cfleming-0367828 April 2018Danielle C. Ryan runs so much in Survivor that I started training for a 5k race because of it. She runs on hills, rocks, and more rocky terrain. She even would run underwater if she could. She scales cliffs, darts through caves, and unsympathetically tells her crew mate "you're going to die" (maybe because she's not a good runner?). Most of the movie is like a cross-fit advert.
It has a weak story and every enemy overacts (i.e., flips, spins through air, flails, etc.) when killed but if you watch Survivor with low expectations it's not terrible. -
emphedokles28 July 2014This "movie" is about a running blond pretty girl. Originally she came from a spaceship, but that does not matter very much. The story is paper thin or to say it precisely, there is no story. It is one of that stories which is that flat, that it bends time and space and you know not only from the beginning how this movie will end, you will just know the complete plot. Thats because you have seen this story in 10 other equal cheap "Oh no! My spaceship crashed!" scifi movies. I am pretty sure the screenplay was not longer then. "Ships having an accident, then pretty girl runs around, kills some evil dudes, finds a horse yadayadayada the end." Its one of that movies you can watch when you already planned to fall asleep at your couch or when you are drunk like a skunk and want to watch some easy nothing. If you watching it sober, you will for sure fast forward half of the movie.
-
tkell314 August 2017I was pretty much captivated by the lead actress and would have turned it off after 15 minutes if not for her. That face! My guess is she played some kind of sport growing up because she's athletic and easily the best part about this movie since she lends some credibility to the action sequences and has amazingly expressive eyes. As an aside Hollywood seems to have forgotten how important facial expressions are in conveying what is going on, preferring to dazzle with effects and hammer you over the head with inane dialogue.
Anywho, Chuchran does a great job, but it's just too rough with too little plot for anyone to overcome. -
SPOILERS!!!
When the film started, It reminded me a great deal like After Earth. Stuck on a spaceship well away from their original home, Earth. Then, they crash to a planet with hostile inhabitants...like The 100. Then to discover it is actually Earth where half are on the surface, still human like, and the rest below, deformed monsters. Just like the Time Machine.
I'm not saying it was a bad film, there was a good story in there, but it was predictable in a way that figuring out it was Earth became simple after a very short time of them being there. A lot of good ideas, but they were poorly acted upon which made it lose a lot in my rating. -
paul_haakonsen17 August 2014Having read the synopsis for this movie, I must admit that I didn't really expect too much from it, and now having seen it, I can honestly say that the movie lived up to the low expectations.
The story is about the last of mankind searching the vast reaches of space for an inhabitable planet. A spaceship tracking a signal has to go into a wormhole, when disaster strikes. The ship is torn apart and the surviving crew is stranded on the alien planet, having to fight for their very lives to stay alive, against hostile humans and monstrous humanoids.
The storyline was essentially adequate, albeit a bit too simple. And there was a bit too much focus on Danielle Chuchran's athletic skills for running and rock-climbing.
The creatures in the movie were looking more like a crossbreed between the orcs and trolls of "Lord of the Rings", which just made the movie seem like a half-hearted attempt at a Sci-Fi movie. And while we are speaking of "Lord of the Rings", the scenes with Danielle Chuchran running around the barren rocky landscape with a panning camera flying around was just too much like the scene where Legolas was running around. At least do something original...
The reason for me sitting down to watch the movie was Danielle Chuchran and Kevin Sorbo. And sure, they made the movie watchable and endurable, but they were struggling hard with an almost non-existing script and storyline.
"Survivor" is a below average Sci-Fi movie, and if you are in for an evening of Sci-Fi, then I would suggest that you find something else, because this movie is not really worth it.
A mere 4 out of 10 stars to "Survivor". -
I like Kevin Sorbo, he plays the low key hero well. Its just unfortunate he does as many poor roles as he does good ones and I feel he is well under used here instead relying on pretty faces, glossy shots, odd music, dodgy background story, nonsense ongoing story....
The story is a pretty basic SciFi stable - mankind messes up the planet, searches for a new one, finds more than they bargained for. Nothing wrong with that except the way they messed it up was pretty non-sensical even in a budget SciFi flic - adjusting Earth's orbit via particle accelerators and creating wormholes throughout the galaxies!!?!?!
Err...no on many levels!...and explained in the blink of an eye before falling in to the trap of 'pretty people, ridiculous personal dramas, overly glossy shots...etc' rather than concentrating on quality of the script and screenplay to make up for the lack of £¥$¢
One of only 7 ships, long since lost alone in space, tracks a signal and sends a dropship into a wormhole, where of course disaster strikes and the ship is lost leaving the few survivors (oddly all young, bright tweens, plus for some reason the main ships captain!) stranded on the alien world.
Cue hostile humans and monstrous humanoids (and a Horse!!!), all of which appear without any questions from the protagonists...and the humans speak perfect English despite initially having their own language! (I'm surprised it took so long for the survivors to work out the twist - ps Its Earth!)
The film then turns in to a montage of scenes in which Danielle Chuchran learns to ride said horse, shows off her athletic and rock-climbing, fights off alien hoards, wins the lottery saves the planet, resets time...err...I think I fell asleep at some point...all thanks to her amazing wrist implant that can perform any task she asks of it (scanning bodies, remote firing ship beacons, atmospheric testing...)
Finally things start to move and then it just goes from 'uh?' to 'duh!'
And on to the nasty creatures which would have looked at home in the Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately they seems to fit more in to the 'good idea at the time' category than having any real impact. And in any case if this is simply meant to be a 'future earth' then their presence just doesn't make sense in the time scale between ship launch and crash.
The movie was at best 'watchable' and filled a few minutes of my life. Unfortunately it was at times rather painful, and at others rather boring thanks to the poor script and storyline,and not least the ending which screamed 'pilot for a series' as there was no real conclusion merely a sort-of-final battle followed by the arrival of the mother ship. .... If it hadn't been for an evening of boring TV I may not have made it to the end (tbh I may not even have gotten through the opening credits with the ridiculous 'earth is doomed' history)
There are better films out there on similar themes.
3/10 -
inesco13 April 2015First of all, I didn't expect much from this going into it, which helps with this sort of thing. I was pleasantly surprised.
It's all a matter of expectation. I used to browse the sci-fi sections of the video stores back in the 90s trying to find anything decent and this move was better than a LOT of what I watched back then.
It's better than all of these similar-themed movies I watched back in the day: - Survivor (1987) - Nightfall (1988) - Def-Con 4 (1985) - Cherry 2000 (1987) - Cyborg (1989) - maybe not too much better than this one, but a little.
I would put in on about the same level of cheesy sci-fi action fare as:- Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) - Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
(well maybe not as good as the last one)
Seriously though, if you don't expect much of this, you'll probably be entertained.- pretty good action
- pretty good low-budget special effects
- plot moves along pretty well without too many lags
- good make up effects
- lots of gorgeous southern Utah scenery
- strong lead performances by Chuchran and Sorbo
Overall, I would describe it as a pretty decent Sci-Fi time waster.
And to reference other commenter's' mentions of Morlocks, this movie is WAY better than the Guy Pierce/Jeremy Irons, The Time Machine (2002)!
If you are interested in another Chuchran/Lyde collaboration, The Curse of the Dragon Slayer (2013) is also a pretty decent 80s style fantasy/sword & sorcery flick. -
Jackbv12331 July 2017There is almost no plot after a scout ship crashes on unknown planet, unless you count Kate traveling 60 kilometers over semi-mountainous terrain to rescue her injured captain and then a score more to find the crash site so she can send a distress beacon.
There is very little dialogue for at least half the movie, which is good because Danielle Chuchran delivers it poorly in quick but flat lines.
One thing is for certain. Kate, who has lived all her two-score years of life on a space ship is in physical shape that boggles the mind. She runs and climbs and runs and climbs. In crashing, Kate falls out of the scout ship and plummets apparently miles but opens a tiny chute about 50 feet above the water and survives. Then she gets knocked out and captured, but her captor is gone when she wakes up so she escapes. He or another of the natives (all wearing masks) traps her again, but she escapes again by simply climbing away. Chased by a half-dozen or more natives who are almost on top of her, somehow she is magically away from them and "safe". Three monsters corner her with three arrows left so she climbs a sheer cliff, then shoots at least twice that many arrows to kill them all.
More running, more impossible fighting. The monsters have 4 inch claws but never use them and outweigh Kate 2-1 but she defeats several of them in hand to hand several times.
Finally some plot and dialogue with about 20 minutes left in this 1-1/2 hour film. And the plot is not that great.
In this part of the movie, natives remove their clumsy masks which appeared to be for breathing, but apparently they don't need them.
Chuchran has a pretty enough face, if you enjoy looking at a dirty girl with unkempt hair. But she is not enough to carry this movie with its ridiculous fights and lame plot. Wait til you see the ending. -
aschmoe21 January 2020Sword and Planet is a really rare subgenre, and I was so excited to find one that it probably colors my review, but this movie definitely exceeded my expectation.
It's pretty much the classic Earth-man lands on a hostile primitive planet and socks it to the local aliens with their superior kung-fu. But of course, this time the Earth-man is actually the Earth-girl Kate Mitra (Danielle Chuchran). I'm not sure what happens to her sleeves, but she doesn't need them to kick lots of alien and scale every mountain like a champ. I'm not sure how much of those stunts Chuchran does on her own, but whoever did it, dayum, good work. The character Kate is a bit of a stone, but plot-wise, it makes sense, she's falling back on her training and tuning herself out in this truly traumatic experience. And frankly, this is what I like to see in my Sword and Planet heroes, and I'm glad that they didn't decide that because she's a girl she needs to have a softer side. Kate Mitra proudly stands shoulder to shoulder with Sword and Planet heroes like John Carter and Flash Gordon.
I felt like the combat was very realistic too. There aren't a lot of useless spins or flips. There are a few leaping attacks but they almost always end badly, which is good, being dramatic in RL fighting is rarely a good idea. People do not expire from small wounds, you do see people go for take downs and finishers. There are moments when Kate gets concussed or winded and she never does that weird second-wind thing where the movie hero is losing and then inexplicably gets their strength back and wins because the movie plot needs them too. This makes Kate Mitra a much more reasonable and relateable character than a lot of other action heroes and makes the action feel more credible. I'm especially pleased that Survivor pulls this off because I absolutely would have forgiven them for non-real action in a female-lead Sword and Planet movie.
Dialog is not great. For most of the movie, Kate Mitra is alone anyways, and when she is around someone she could talk to, she's usually understandably out of breath or emotionally shocked by the last crazy thing that happened. However, I think there's a certain realism to this, you do get the impression that Kate is stomping out her own feelings because she has to survive. Plot isn't particularly twisty or turny either, she's basically just lurching from one disaster to the next until the director runs out of film, but if you're a fan of Flash Gordon or John Carter stories, that's pretty true to the genre. And to be honest, bad dialog or plot would have ruined the movie, so I'm okay with the decision to keep the movie focused on stunts and bare shoulders. -
siderite26 August 2015This film is, indeed, all about Danielle Chuchran. She is beautiful, incredibly athletic and a quite decent actress. The sci- fi in the film is of the type of Firefly, you know, you go to another planet and there are American cowboys there. So not that much. However, the few sci- fi bits in the story did further it, so in my mind that part was a success.
After enjoying the hell out of Shadow of the Cabal, I had to see this movie as well, especially since it starred Danielle, and I can tell you it did not disappoint. The story, as usual (shame, Arrowstorm!), was a bit silly, but simple enough to not bother me tremendously. Kevin Sorbo did play a larger role, although it's becoming a pattern in these films: he appears as some sort of father authority figure, does a few scenes, then splits.
The action scenes were really good, as expected from a professional stunt actress, but also the director has to be good at it. The scenes were great and reminded me of the orc elf battle that hooked me when watching Shadow of the Cabal. The implanted computer, scanner and holographic screen was a great addition and allowed the story to move fast over some logistical problems like how people find each other, coordinate over large distances and detect food or injuries.
There were issues with the film. The technical details in the introduction almost threw me off completely in the beginning of the film. The character of Weston was ridiculous and completely unnecessary - they could have done more with him. Also they took their sweet time to "get it". I won't spoil it here, but as a hint just listen carefully at the alien language and you can figure it out in the first 15 minutes.
Other than that, few characters and a lot less character development made this almost a pure action film. Danielle was great, and also Melanie Stone, which you may (barely) recognize from the Mythica series. Sorbo acted well, but his character was a little bit ridiculous. He had a lot of scenes about bones and almost all cracked me up - no pun intended (OK, I did intend it a little).
It is far from perfect, but was one of the best movies in this particular genre and I really don't understand the mostly mean comments the film has received here. I mean, if they would have used cars instead of running around it would have been Mad Max, and you bloody loved that one! -
benedictweich25 July 2014I don't really know how to say this, but it seems the creator of this movie decided to put all ingredients from previously successful movies into one big blender, give it a good stir and then market the resulting tasteless slur that came out of it.
The following is a short summary of the plot, in case you want to save yourself the trouble (SPOILERS !!):
--------------------------------------
The Story starts with the typical crew of a spacecraft, 40 years after leaving Earth due to a climatic breakdown of the ecosystem. While investigating a planet in hope of finding a place to set up camp, everything goes south and everyone crashes into whats looks like the set of 'Breaking Bad', right in the middle of a reddish desert. From there on she gets attacked by a group of looters copied out of 'Mad Max', who then in turn get eaten by Orcs. The heroine barely escapes and after finding out her captain is still alive, starts to make her way across the desert armed with a bow 'Hunger Games' style with a little touch 'Lord of the Rings', fighting off more faceless looters and wild animals right out of any alien movie ever made. The latter to save a horse, which turns the movie into the 'Horse Whisperer' (Thank god for the riding lessons seemingly mandatory for starship crews). What follow now is central plot arch of a badly wounded commander (as seen in 'After Eart') telling the apprentice heroine how to activate the emergency transponder. After almost getting eaten by space-Orcs, and getting saved over and over by a "good scavenger" (fluent of course in both, future-earth-speak and old-school English) she decides to team up (including "stitch the wound on may back while tell you my life"-scene). Wait a second.... replace those gas masks with ape-masks and you are right in the middle of 'Planet of the Apes'. And in case you haven't figured it out before, the helpful gas-masked assailant will tell you directly, what everyone should know by know: Oh my god, this is Earth! After finding her captain, and rescuing the lost daughter of our helpful, muscular, multilingual scavenger, the movie goes underground 'The Descent' style including small corridors, hordes of Orcs and heroic characters staying behind to save the rest. And of course, the final battle between the leader of the "evil hordes" and the helpful one, as seen in 'Postman'.
-------------------------------------------
Summary: Lots of running through deserts, rock-climbing, punching gas-masked assailants and space-Orcs, leg-grabbing, panicking and rolling around in dirt.
My Tipp: Save yourself the trouble and just watch the originals- Planet of the Apes - Lord of the Rings - Hunger Games - The Descent - The Horse Whisperer - After Earth (with limitations regarding entertainment value)
-
seekingallthetime11 August 2014Oh my God! What a master piece, surely, certainly. This movie sets a record how bad and dumb a movie can be. If you by your bad luck happen to see this master piece of *hit, you will be transformed into a shape you find yourself eyes wide open , and also, your mouth wide open. What will come from your mouth is not so decent to write here. The Credits goes to the Producer who put forward such a brilliant idea to make this masterpiece of *hit. The Director was so confident that he would sleep under weeds during the shooting. The female part you find in the movie is an athlete so he practices all the way for sprints, she also likes hide-n-seek. Since the movie was shot on a Halloween, some ignorant persons interfere the shooting by coming in here and there. The cameraman was following the director's weed thing, so the female athlete had to kick off those Halloween intruders herself, that's an extra credit. Oh my God~
-
soundfx-7114020 February 2016If you have anything over a 5th grade education, you might want to avoid seeing this and insulting your intelligence! Although the star (Danielle Churchram) is very pretty and (spoiler alert) she can jump around on rocks really good... it's hard to watch anyone do that for the better part of an hour! The music was done well, but the music build up could not be taken seriously as the plot and story line was just that weak. I don't know if you can call this movie a SiFi as that would indicate that there was some kind of science utilized. Whatever scientific information that were spewed from the script's pages, were not even close to being right. Next time guys... Google "What's the speed of light?" instead of making up some silly number! And learn about wormholes and what they're supposed to do! lol
-
houcan4 June 2015I will not sugar coat it- this is one of the worst film I have ever seen. I am not exaggerating, not many terrible films I have seen quite compare to this one.
Since I am a science student, I will start with the rather unconvincing physics in this film- I know I am being pedantic and this is a sci-fi film, but at least try to make it somewhat convincing. First, the protagonist Kate explains how they 'got there'- the Earth was going out of orbit (how?), so scientists used particle colliders to steer the Earth. Wow! Particle colliders to steer the Earth? They really think bumping a few protons together is going to make it all better? Oh but it gets worse, the ocean then 'evaporates'- I appreciate their awareness of climate change, but there just isn't enough fossil fuel, uranium etc. on the planet to do that. Coming onto the plot slightly, they packed a few survivors onto a spaceship as the Earth's ocean was evaporating. Come on, seriously, what were they doing before that? Isn't it a bit too late when the ocean was disappearing? OK, so the Earth was turning into hell and they couldn't find another habitable planet, so they just wondered in space for 40 odd years. Eventually they'll run out of fuel, considering how big that ship is. But OK, let's assume they have fusion power and packed a lot of what's left of the Earth's water on-board, wouldn't 40 years of wondering around still be a problem? Modern sea-faring ships need to be constantly resupplied every few months at best, and repaired every few years or so. But 40 years! Where's the food, repair material etc. coming from? It's like they threw the laws of thermodynamics out of the windows of the ship (if there was one). Now I know this is too much physics, so I'll cover one brief point- when giant chunks were falling out of the sky when their shuttle disintegrates, when they hit the ground maybe a couple of small flames appeared. But in the real world, a chunk that big will destroy a whole city, so Kate wouldn't be dodging those debris- oh no, she'd be dead.
Now, the weak understanding of science on this film, which I only mentioned briefly in this review, is only a starter to why it's bad. Another reason is that the plot and characters don't even qualify the title of being 'one-dimensional' (let alone 3 dimensional). I put spoilers because the plot is very easy to describe- our omnipotent heroine somehow survives a crash landing, her friends are all kidnapped or killed. From then on it's just her running around killing things, climb a few mountains, then managed to mount a horse like a pro on her first ride, all without eating, drinking, sleeping and relieving! Plus she was chased by a few monsters, and was stalked by this bloke. Two plus sides are that most of the fights are well choreographed and the music seems appropriate, but everything was falling apart.
All the characters are introduced too abruptly as well. Every character just suddenly appear, not to mention the minimal amount of personal back stories to make any of them 3 dimensional- I can count the number of occasions where we can explore their personal history or personality with a single hand- once where Kate explains (briefly) how lucky she survives to the grand old age of 21, and how she loves training, another occasion where the captain talked about horses on Earth, plus one more instance. But most of the time, it feels like- who is this (wo)man? Why is this happening? This is not a mystery or crime drama, where there is eureka moment, the whole thing is too incoherent.
The film tried to mimic Planet of Apes' mystery about the truth of the 'alien' planet i.e. the protagonists are totally unaware that it is Earth in the future- and fails. The breadcrumbs were everywhere- horses, people with double barrel shotguns and skiing goggles, so it's very hard not to know that they are home.
Lastly, the ending is ridiculous. The chief whose name I cannot remember blows himself up with a dynamite for some reason unexplained- then the bloke-who-was-stalking-Kate gave a very concise inspirational speech to his tribe. Wow, how they suddenly turned from trying to kill him to believing and cheering for him, even after he killed a lot of this own tribe's men.
To sum up the whole film- the science is comical, the characters are somewhat stereotypical and not even one-dimensional. Forget about the plot- is there really a plot at all? Not to mention that the attempt to create some 'mystery' complete fails. -
suite921 November 2016The Three Acts:
The initial tableaux: Earth has been made unlivable. Seven colony ships left Earth, each looking for a new planet on which to live. The film starts in one of those ships, and it has long since lost contact with the others. Further, after 47 years, the original crew is gone except for Captain Hunter. Half a dozen teens spend much of their time training in combat.
Kate finds a wormhole to a possibly feasible planet. The captain gets convinced. So the ship heads through, only to encounter disaster in a space born rock field. The captain and some of the teens survive the crash of their space ship.
Delineation of conflicts: The humans are not alone on their new planet. There are some humanoids with blades and guns, but also some bipedal monsters. The monsters like to kill members of the other groups. The humanoids bicker among themselves, and decide, on the whole, not to like the newcomers.
The Captain gets seriously wounded early on, and holes up with his radio. The teens except Kate get killed or captured soon after planet fall. So, most of the film is Kate against the world and its natives.
One of the dissenters among the humanoids, Rogan, might lend her a hand, but her finely honed battle training does not seem to recognize that. He rescues her three times, she tries to kill him four times.
Resolution: There are not all that many directions for this elimination derby can go. In any case, rest assured that Kate gets to run a lot. -
peter-kreuz17 September 2014The movie is a combination of the movie "After earth" and the TV series "The 100". No attempt has been made to hide the similarities. It is disappointing how the plot contains huge gaps, where information is needed. Major plot points are left without any logical explanation - nothing is leading to them and there is no consequence from them.
The dialog and the story are full with clichés and the attempt to create a new "language" fails miserably and is quite frankly offensive.
The open end of the movie should lead to sequels although the action is boring (there is almost no action at all), the effects are ... mediocre, the music too loud and not appropriate and the plot is missing depth. -
elgomm30 September 2015It really is a bad movie, but if you're into mocking bad movies this is ripe with material for you. The story is slow and the dialog is terrible. The first half of the movie the main character runs around a lot. #### spoiler alert #####
The movie is a total knockoff of The Time Machine (They travel to the future and the underground dwellers eat the surface dwellers).
Moving on....
My favorite scene is after the ship crashes and they revive their friend with three chest compressions just so they can tell her she's going to die.... and then she dies. I also enjoyed how they fall to earth and don't burn up in the atmosphere, and the bow and arrow that disappears and reappears. -
neil-47629 August 2015One of the 7 spaceships carrying the surviving humans from a poisoned Earth passes through a wormhole and then crashes, stranding the surviving survivors in a place which looks suspiciously like Utah. Well-trained survival expert (the surviviest of the surviving survivors) and hottie Kate (Danielle Chuchran) faces off against Mad Max warriors and some monsters while running a great deal, swimming a bit, fighting a lot, and otherwise occupying time until we arrive a twist which has been obvious from about 10 minutes in to all except those who have never seen a film before.
Miss Chuchran is physically very impressive, and deals with the considerable physical requirements of her role very well: her thesping is not quite so impressive. The scenery is fantastic, and the look of this Kickstarter-funded movie is impressive: the visuals mean that you are often unaware that this is a low budget movie. The special effects are better than the budgetary considerations would have you believe, and the film is technically well made - beautifully photographed, good sound, well edited, a pleasing score, and so on.
It is let down in the writing. The story is completely predictable, and you can list the influences as they pass by - the whole thing is cobbled together out of bits taken from other films. It's a shame - what's seen on screen deserves better than the second hand tripe it's hung on. -
bemyfriend-4018418 March 2021And Saves the Human Race. Oh, my "Review is too short". Now, it's not.
-
Kevin Sorbo played Captain Dylan Hunt in the TV series Andromeda. In this film he played the part of Captain Hunter! Furthermore, he came out with one of Dylan's favourite phrases: "It's never easy" OK, they are tongue in cheek aknowledging the overall derivative nature of the movie. I can go along with that.
One of my long term bug bears is that many warrior maidens in sci-fi/fantasy films do not have any physical credibility. This film does not make that mistake. The heroine, Kate, is well built with broad shoulders and obvious vital capacity. Ten out of ten for that.
There is an early hint when Kate's implanted computer describes the gravity as being "normal". Derivative - "Planet of the Apes". Also, a lot like "The 100." There is a great dearth of new sci-fi/fantasy films. This is jolly good knock about stuff. We need more of it! -
gpeltz21 January 2015The title of the movie is Survivor (2014) Written and Directed by John Lyde, I found the movie entertaining,eminently watchable, and dumb.
Spoiler ahead.
2014 was a year of Science Fiction gold, This movie was overshadowed. Whats it about? A one woman army of one, chasing across some attractive landscapes. In this case our Marathon Woman is Kate, played by Danielle Churchran. She is pretty, and watching her run, jump, climb, ride, fight and fight is entertaining, She is suppose to be from space, with a crew aboard a spaceship piloted by Captain Hunter played by Kevin Sorbo, who it turns out, spends most of the movie on his back. The ship is also crewed by an odd lot of expendable actors.
Escaping a dead earth, they see a world to inhabit. They hop on the wormhole express, next stop an earth like world; So they crash and land on a wild and primitive planet. Sound familiar? Rather early on,After the crash, the crew is separated, When the movie fits an action search and find format, it rolls smoothly enough, but when the story gets in the way, it goes sappy. Enter Rogan, played by Rocky Myers English speaking Clan member, and resident of this "strange" planet, with horses. and Murlocks.
The creature effects are passable, All around good production values, nice score by James Schafer The movie does fine when the plot doesn't get in the way, It ends rather anti anticlimactically as the remainder of the cast continue to overact, and reassemble to be rescued from what? this movie, can't blame 'em. I would give Survivor six out of ten stars because of its free-fall plot. -
It's okay.
Early scenes feel rather perfunctory. The protagonist's inner thoughts are voiced as a monologue providing exposition; training sequences are mildly ham-handed. A stand-in father figure offers kernels of wisdom and substituted affection, and this all transpires within 10-15 minutes to get to the bulk of the narrative.
Once the plot begins, John Schafer's music, while suitable, immediately evokes greater drama and thrills than the fast pace allows us to naturally feel. That pace also means that action scenes and story beats feel forced, and not organic. The extraordinary capabilities of protagonist Kate, honed through training, are impressive - but maybe too much so to be believable. In fact, the course of events feels so ordered - fabricated - that 'Survivor' begins to seem as though it were written like a videogame. For much of the film, moments take place not out of genuine narrative flow, but because it's what the experience demands. As two prime examples, consider the sheer amount of time devoted to shots of Kate running, or climbing, and the direly casual reveal of the plot twist that comes with about one-third left.
A plot twist, mind you, that we saw coming pretty early on, and which pointedly echoes older, very recognizable sci-fi tales or horror flicks.
Still, some stunts and shots look particularly good; fight sequences are actually pretty fun in their choreography. Fine costume design, props, hair, and makeup build the suspension of disbelief we may otherwise have difficulty sustaining for lack of meaningful engagement, and the filming locations are pretty swell. Visual effects are a bit of a mixed bag, yet so long as a character is simply interacting with an aspect realized with computer graphics, and not wholly immersed in an artificial environment, the result is fair in execution.
The cast is mostly adequate in their performances, presumably limited by the directness of John Lyde's screenplay and direction. It's unfortunate that the most capable actor involved (Melanie Stone) has little time on screen in a small supporting role. If nothing else, lead Danielle C. Ryan demonstrates enough potential that I wouldn't mind seeing more of her pictures.
For all its flaws, 'Survivor' is modestly entertaining. The story is rushed, and derivative, but still satisfactory enough to hold our attention. The ending - as ham-handed, if in a different way, as the beginning - nonetheless feels rewarding. The film is put together reasonably well; it works, on its chosen level.
And that's the key. There's no question that this is a few steps below a production backed by a major studio, and even other projects originating in crowdfunding have managed their resources better. Anyone coming across 'Survivor' is sure to already know what to anticipate. But if you're willing to accept the limitations of one picture's construction, just as we accept bad science for the sake of the premise, then the feature becomes something we can just sit back and enjoy without actively attending to it.
It's not the most fulfilling ride in the world, and I can honestly say I hoped to like it more than I do. Still, if you're looking for a sci-fi action thriller and aren't especially discerning in your preferences, 'Survivor' is enjoyable enough if you come across it. -
So apparently the Earth drifts out of its orbit for some reason and to fix this the human race decides to smash sub atomic particles together in particle accelerators despite the fact this would do absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Then to make matters worse for some other random reason these particle accelerators create mini black holes which proceed to heat up the Earth and boil off its oceans. This of course ignores the fact that said black holes would in fact rapidly descent to the Earth's core and begin eating it from the inside.
Anyway what this film mostly consists of is a girl running, jumping and climbing a lot. At one point she even has a magic quiver of arrows which, despite the fact you can clearly see it has only one arrow in it, keeps producing new ones until she's killed all her enemies before finally running out. She also does a lot of posing on high rocky outcrops despite the fact she's trying to avoid the locals.
Oh and Kevin Sorbo lies at the bottom of a cliff with a broken leg for two days in a desert yet appears not to be in any need of food or water. He really is Hercules it would appear.
I notice this was funded through kickstarter so that old maxim of "a fool and his money are soon parted" seems as true today as ever. Probably more so if this nonsense is anything to go by.