The Last Scout

...and so it should be! When mankind destroy the Earth in 67 minutes, it falls to some astronauts to seek out a suitable new home for who's left of us somewhere in the galaxy. Now proof, if it were ever needed, that we need to work on our disaster-planning recruitment process now ensues as this motley and increasingly dysfunctional bunch on the "Pegasus" encounter a derelict spaceship populated by mysterious children. What now plays out is a predictable cat and mouse, spaceship, drama with nobody sure who to trust; old grudges rearing their ugly heads and the future of humanity clearly placed in the most precarious of situations. To be fair, the production standards and visual effects are not the worst, but the inane and plentiful dialogue and a shockingly mediocre cast of drama school drop-out types do the mean, moody and magnificent in an almost embarrassingly risible fashion. It's an old story that is clearly a labour of love for Simon Philipps and Paul Tanter, but it's not an original bone in it's body and at only ten minutes short of two hours - well, it's just far too long and meandering. I love my sci-fi, but this is really pretty derivative and poor.

Remember Sunshine (2007), where people are dying on a spaceship that was on a suicide mission to save humanity? More specifically, remember that part where they decide that they should take a detour from their mission to do something that wasn't on the schedule. Now, think about how that movie would have played out if they didn't make that stop? Kinda boring, right? But it made sense somewhat... the detour had a rational justification. I mean, it wasn't like Aline, where some off-camera mega corporation was moving in the shadows searching for a super weapon. It wasn't like 2001, where a transistor just happened to fail. Nor like Ad Astra, where ... gee wiz there's a ship floating out there... we have to stop and see if they need help... alright... I don't want to make any spoilers. Let's just say if you are counting the number of space-mission films that rely on the old "unplanned encounter" with a broken down ship was the entire catalyst for the drama, then you might run out of fingers and toes to count them on. And once you see this formula presenting itself, it's time to tune out the movie because what you guess is going to happen is probably going to happen. And don't forget Event Horizon... when somebody looks like they are cracking up in space, what you guess is going to happen is also probably going to happen. This old saw has been making the rounds since John Carpenter put it to good use in the satirical low budget cult film "Dark Star". Well, The Last Scout is basically Dark Star in reverse, and I think it's safe to say that the actors took their roles about as seriously as those who plied their craft in 1974 for a laugh.

I gave this B movie a chance because the trailer made it look like Sunshine or Event Horizon, but it's nothing like that. The characters talk for about an hour like a cheap TV show until something finally happens. The first 40 min could have easily been cut. But even after a little action finally happens, then it's back to more talking until the end of the movie. The trailer only shows that 5 minutes where something actually happens. But the actual movie is just people talking. The special effects are obviously bad, but they do the job. The actors are okay but the problem is that the script is awful. The plot is just not interesting and just tries to recycle better films. This is advertised as horror-sci-fi but it's not scary or even tense, there's just nothing happening, and even when you think something has happened, the big reveal is lame. It's more of a drama-sci-fi. Better just rewatch Event Horizon or Sunshine instead.

The music and sound effects running in background of the whole movie so noise and loud. So i watched with subtitle do understand what the movie about.

For a low budget movie, this film had great acting, an understandable plot, and believable dialogue -- for the first half of the film. The cinematography was very good considering the budget, except it was often way too dark, probably to hide the lousy sets. The score was pretty good, too. But those sets and props, wow, pretty bad. Clothes dryer vents hanging from the ceiling, and the crew was wearing 3M respirators freshly painted over with shiny spray paint and snow boots for their spacesuits. And the ship was held together with tapered wood screws!

Okay, they couldn't afford props. But as I said the acting was well above what you normally see in these cheap films. Plus there was actual character development -- the audience really got to know who those folks were on that spaceship. With real, natural dialogue.

But about midway through the film, it completely falls apart. It's like two different people wrote the first and second half of this film. It starts off as really great straight science fiction movie with a real, consistent plot and characters. Then halfway through, it turns into a snuff film. And the plot scenarios just kept getting more and more ridiculous -- one improbably situation after another. And in the second half of the film, none of the behaviours of the characters had any motivation or grounding in reality, whereas in the beginning, their actions were consistent with their characters and the situations they faced.

Another great thing about this film was that it was very progressive on race. This very small set of characters included a black man, and he had a romantic relationship with one of the (white) female astronauts. There wasn't any hint of derision or bias that I could detect. I'm adding a couple of points to my rating for this fair treatment of race.

My recommendation is to watch the first half of this film until they have the code orange. (It's explained in film -- it happens about half way through.) After that, just turn it off, and write your own ending. It has to be better than what they did to the second half of this film.

triggers: gory depictions of corpses; gory violence; gun (laser) violence

rating 7/10 (for the first half); (submitted July 5, 2020, 1:55 a.m. EDT)