Project Gemini

I am a great fan of space horror movies so I tried Project Gemini. The pro: the production is okay, nothing special but okay. The cons: a script that follows every possible cliche of the genre, also the acting, I am tender here, is improvable, and the story misses momentum and a feel for pace: before anything interesting happens we get all that necessary blabla and introduction that made me almost doze off into Morpheus arms. Anyway, compared to the benchmarks of the genre (Alien, Event Horizon, Pandorum) Project Gemini tastes just very weak. I would even prefer to watch Life (2017) again, which in my view is a very mediocre movie because it lacks of the same issues: a story too predictable and every cliche of the genre squeezed in, but at least the techs and acting are fine ones.

Anything visual in this movie is superb. The CGI, special effects and anything space related is suprisingly good, especially when you see similar US made movies with a tenfold bigger budget looking like a final year filmschool project. Watch any space movie with Bruce Willis in the past ten years and you see what i am talking about.

Now to the bad parts, writing of the story, any dialogue and finally the acting.

Sure, i saw the dubbed version, but still - none of the scenes involving people, looked like they actually were people.

I liked the final twist, but the plotholes are just a little to big to overcome. There are several places where the movie could have taken us to some seriously interesting places, storywise - but instead it always went back to cliche´town.

In the past ten years, there have been some really interesting sci fi movies from Russia, but they seem to be hit or miss, and when they miss, they miss big time, and unfortunatly - this one miss the target, and does it big time.

If you want to watch a sci fi horror with a loved one, and know that any of the Alien movies is to scary, this might be good for that.

This movie was so not it. The acting was really bad. There was almost no point in this movie. The only part that I found a little better was the special effects. And they still weren't that great.

For some reason all of the voice tracks seem to have been re-synchronized in post- processing... the lip movements seem to be english, so i don't get it...

Other than that, this could have been quite an entertaining movie...

• the story isn't much weaker than most of the genre: 5/10
• acting a bit better than cheap sci-fi channel production: 3/10
• visual effects, staging, props very nice, actually: 8.5/10
• same for sound design (without voices): 8/10
• utter lack of understanding of basic physics and engineering: 0/10

(admittedly, this is sadly still standard these days...)

Is this a dubbed russian version, maybe?

Anyway, just my 2 eurocents...

Sure, I will admit that I was immediately suckered into watching the 2022 sci-fi thriller "Proekt 'Gemini'" (aka "Project 'Gemini'") as I saw the rather interesting-looking cover for the movie. The whole outer space concept with the somewhat Lovecraftian theme and tentacled creature was a sure win for me.

Had I heard about "Proekt 'Gemini'" from writers Natalya Lebedeva and Dmitriy Zhigalov prior to sitting down to watch it? No. Not even a single thing. So all I knew about the movie was the cover and the synopsis presenting the movie.

I will say that director Serik Beyseu managed to deliver an entertaining enough movie here with "Proekt 'Gemini'", though it was somewhat of a copy-paste of the classic Ridley Scott movie "Alien" in many ways. And yeah, that actually works, but on that account this 2022 sci-fi thriller just sort of came off as being a mere knock-off and not really delivering much of anything new and innovative.

It should be said that the movie certainly is watchable, don't get me wrong. However, it just is a movie that borrows heavily from other already well-established movies in the sci-fi genre. So don't go expecting too much here.

Visually then "Proekt 'Gemini'" was actually good. Lots of nice special effects with proper CGI that came off as being realistic and also being eye-candy to look at. So in that aspect, then this sci-fi thriller benefitted well from having a proper special effects team working on it.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but I was somewhat baffled as to why the Russian cast were speaking English. I assume that I had the misfortune of watching a dubbed version, which is something I tend to avoid if possible. A movie should be enjoyed in its original language, no doubt about it.

"Proekt 'Gemini'" wasn't as impressive as I had hoped. And while it certainly is watchable and enjoyable enough for what it was, it just failed to be an outstanding movie. So I believe that come next week, then I will have forgotten about this movie, and nor do I think I will ever return to watch it a second time.

My rating of "Proekt 'Gemini'" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.