Terminal Voyage

When a movie starts off with a spaceship floating in space, you are being told that this is where the action is happening. Telling us at the end of the movie that it's all been a simulation implies that...well, there were reasons for everything we saw to be simulated. A smart movie with this sort of premise--like The Matrix--sets this up visually and thematically and follows through on motifs of simulacra or dreams throughout the piece.

Here is a movie where everyone is being tested, but everyone is acting like they're living in real life. I just don't get it. If they hadn't tried to pull a twist ending--where none of our protagonists have suffered any consequences due to their own actions, but the outside world has changed around them despite themselves--this could have been an interesting Man vs. Himself story. It's just a muddled mess, though. And I'm pretty sure some footage is recycled from other B-movies.

First, you start with Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians." A crew is on a star ship and they start being killed off one by one. Add some cheap cliches to attempt to make the characters seem real, like giving the doctor a drug problem (Why is the one character who should be aware of the dangers of drug abuse and is acutely aware there is a limited supply for everyone on board the one who succumbs to it?). Put in the characters behaving by the numbers, saying things like, "We have a mission to uphold"). The movie is so obvious with its plot twists, you start hoping that it's just trying to throw you off, and you see something other than you are expecting. Not at all. In fact, the big surprise plot twist in the film's final act, as well as the "ironic" ending, aren't that surprising or shocking. You watch the movie, wondering what would have happened if they'd tried a little harder.

Wow, was THAT bad! Long, boring, drawn out scenes with no point, bad, melodramatic acting, and a musical score so annoying I wanted to stick a sharp object in my ears to get it to stop.. Why is it that only Emma Sams wears that ridiculous hat? Once you realize how stupid it looks you can't stop staring at it. This was just plain bad.

Quite different in tone from most films produced by Concorde, "Star Quest" follows a group of stranded space explorers towards disorder and self-destruction. There are only a handful of sets as most the scenes take place on the spacecraft, with a few v.r. sequences that - believe it or not - were actually filmed for this movie (unlike other Corman recycle jobs), plus various shots of the craft's exterior thrown in. The acting is also bumped up a bit from the usual B expectations, Emma Samms, Cliff De Young, and Ming-Na being the standouts. Lisa Boyle makes a nice cameo as a v.r. fantasy girl. All in all, a decent sort of extended "Outer Limits" episode with a nihilistic feel and lingering ending.

Diving into the B-movie pool is always risky. Sometimes you find a hidden gem of schlocky fun; other times, you wade into a pit of boredom. If the title didn't already give it away, Terminal Voyage falls squarely into the second category.

The most striking thing about this film is that it's barely 80 minutes long, yet it feels twice as long. The narrative is barely existent: a crew of eight, en route to a habitable Earth-like planet, wakes from cryosleep to find their commander has been dead for decades. If that wasn't bad enough, they also soon discover that Earth's governments resolved ecological collapse the only way they knew how: by nuking each other into oblivion. It's a premise that could have set the stage for a thought-provoking sci-fi drama, but for Terminal Voyage, it's where any intrigue ends.

From there, the film drags through repetitive scenes of the crew struggling to cope by talking endlessly, escaping into VR simulations, taking drugs, and even hanging themselves. Around this time, they also begin to grow suspicious about the circumstances of some deaths. There's no real reason for them to be paranoid, though, as each death is either an accident or suicide. However, the plot really insists on this paranoia angle in a flimsy attempt to manufacture tension,. Something that it also tries to capture by shamelessly ripping off scenes from Alien. Meanwhile, the characters have no apparent astronaut-like duties and show no real interest in their original mission, which is colonizing a new planet, I guess?

There are some familiar faces in the cast: Steven Bauer (Scarface), Brenda Bakke (Hot Shots! Part Deux), and Ming-Na Wen (Street Fighter, The Mandalorian). Even the supporting cast features actors you might vaguely recognize from 90s sci-fi TV. But despite the reasonably solid cast for such a low budget production, the weak script and poor direction leave them sleepwalking through their lines, and I'm pretty sure they knew full well that this material was beneath them.

The movie briefly stirs from its coma at the very end with a plot twist that thematically seems to tie into the VR scenes. But by that point, I couldn't care less about deciphering the film's message. I was just glad that it was over.

Terminal Voyage is nihilistic, joyless, derivative, and utterly dull. It's hard to find anything worth recommending here. If you want some low-budget sci-fi schlock you can actually have fun with, you're better off looking elsewhere.