Debug

Oh dear. Just... oh dear. I like science fiction and I always enjoy seeing a good 'spaceship' type set. Just about the only two big budget 'spaceship set-type' movies of recent years were the Star Trek reboots and Prometheus. Therefore, I always try to give a space movie a chance. I shouldn't have bothered here. If you see this film out on DVD in the shops, you may notice its quite flashy box. Don't be deceived. The cover art is about the most expensive part of this whole film.

Basically, it's cheap. That's really all you need to know. During the opening scene, you'll get a sort of establishing shot of the outside of a giant spaceship. Only it looks like it was designed on a ZX Spectrum. I probably should have turned the film off there and saved myself an hour and a half. What follows is six kids (okay, teens – but they acted like kids in my opinion) trying to get rid of an (evil) artificial intelligence from the spaceship's computer. The kids wear cheap orange uniforms and I wonder which genius actually entrusted them to this critical mission? Surely the crew of the Red Dwarf would be more organised than this crowd? The spaceship is nothing new – white clean-looking corridors and... well, that's about it. Nothing new and certainly nothing expensive.

You won't give a damn about a single character. They're all equally bland. I guess I should be grateful they're not that annoying. Anyway, in this cheap 2001: A Space Odyssey set, you get a vague Event Horizon plot where the kids have to face their fears (or something – I was kind of tuning out by this stage). But, whereas Event Horizon had a cool Gothic feel for its decent, well-known actors to get lost in, this one is just cheap white corridors for its unknown cast to find – apparently – scary stuff in.

Yes, it's fair to say that I didn't like it. Granted I didn't really hate it, it's just there's nothing new here and nothing I have seen, only much better. If you like your 'spaceship movies' (like I do), just watch anything from Star Trek to Event Horizon (or Pandorum – I liked that, but no one else seemed to). Just forget this and ignore the enticing cover art on its DVD box.

Okay, it had one positive: the 'HUDs' (heads up displays) were kind of neat and I'd never seen that special effect before. But that alone wasn't worth an hour and a half of my time.

If you consider yourself a movie critic savant, go buy your tickets, eat your popcorn and stick to the big screen. Those big money making movie producers/director/actors eagerly want your reviews!

For people who know how to enjoy different genres and can enjoy low-budget films, then watch it. So in a nutshell is it big screen material? No. Horror? Not really. Predictable? Yes. Low-budget? Definitely and very obvious.

Acting was decent, even Mamoa. You can't put Mamoa in a movie and not have him physically kicking ass, even as an AI! Is it worth watching just because Mamoa stars in it? Meh.... Is it worth watching because David Hewlett's name is stamped on it? Yes!

Does it leave you feeling euphoric? No. Would I watch it again? Yes.

So I recommend you watch it, on a lazy day while multi-tasking on a laptop/iPad. Keep in mind that if you are expecting a mind-blowing out of the ordinary movie, don't bother watching. IT IS A LOW-budget movie. The Sci-Fi channel has put some seriously bad movies out there, so compare to those, Debug falls in that realm of a decent Sci-Fi watchable.

There is little point in beating around the bush about it: the obvious comparison for Debug is Event Horizon. While the subplots and backgrounds may differ, both films deal with the same scenario: an evil that has taken over a spaceship and a crew that comes to investigate. Comparing the two, it is peculiar to find that the reason Event Horizon worked so much better has nothing to do with its production values and everything to do with its focus on atmosphere—an area where Debug has every opportunity to match it, and simply fails to do so.

To its credit, Debug manages to stand up fairly well in quite a few aspects and punches well above its budget in terms of production values.

The acting is all right, with the exception of Jason Momoa's campy creep performance as I Am. Perhaps, already having achieved fame as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones, he did not feel the same need to distinguish himself as the other actors. Perhaps the role simply did not suit him. Either way, the lacklustre sleaze he brings to the role cheapens and stifles all tension and drama whenever he is on screen. Jeananne Goossen and Sidney Leeder, in contrast, bring life and character to their roles, whereas the rest of the cast is simply passable.

The visuals in Debug are not without flaws, but they are at times gorgeous. (The HUD effects, in particular, stand out.) Sadly, they sometimes fail to impart a feeling of reality—of substance. Future technology may be clean and durable, but any surface will have wear and tear. In Debug, they tend to look like freshly moulded plastic—featureless and flimsy. Strangely, this does not seem to be down to capability so much as aesthetics, as it is true for the set as much as the CGI. As a whole, though, the visuals work, and most of the time the set and the CGI fit well together.

Sound effects are generally fair to pretty damned good, although they tend to fail to produce a sense of presence. The same goes for the score, which seems to have been mixed as so to be unobtrusive rather than evocative—a strange choice for a horror film.

All in all, it would seem Debug has enough good points to provide a solid horror experience. (After all, many films have done so with less.) As sci-fi horror is a genre I love and the space-based variety is woefully underrepresented, it disheartens me to say that it does not—and for rather bizarre reasons. You see, while the production would have worked well for a sci-fi drama, its manner of presentation promotes detachment rather than immersion. The tension never grabs you and events never draw you in, making the actual horror elements fall flat. Part of it is editing, but choices made in seemingly every aspect of the film—from character exposition to camera angles—exacerbate the problem. The effect, tragically, is an audience indifference this type of narrative can ill afford, making a film that could have, should have been a rough gem turn out to be just another barren space rock.

Debug is, in the end, a mediocre film with several massive, bulky cargo holds full of wasted potential due to an almost mindless indifference to the core driver of every good horror film—atmosphere.

The Good Bits

1.Firstly, when watching this you have to remember this is a low budget movie. It's never going to have the slick VFX of blockbusters like the new Star Trek films. That said, I think both the VFX and SFX were really good. I totally bought that these people were in deep space on a ship. The id chips and the personal visual displays were particularly good.

2.You can tell Jason Momoa is having a good time playing the bad guy - and he does a solid job. Adrian Holmes also puts in a good performance as the corrupt warden in charge of the group.

3. The opening 20-30 minutes are well paced and set up the story well. The first part of the film creates an unsettlingly clinical atmosphere that unfortunately is not sustained throughout the film. The ending wraps things off nicely and feels like a satisfactory conclusion for the audience.

The Not So Good Bits

1. Characterisation. I felt if you removed several of the debug crew from the film it would not affect the plot in any way e.g. the characters Samson Connoly and Lara Riley felt like they were extraneous.

2. The fact that all but one of the female characters stripped down to their underwear, for generally unknown and spurious reasons, while none of the men so much as rolled up their sleeves. It made this film feel like, despite it's futuristic storyline, the writing belongs to history bin.

This didn't cost much as they certainly saved on sets, script, FX and direction. Brainless low rent tosh.