Ultra Red

I was not familiar with the 2023 sci-fi thriller "Ultra Red" from writer and director Michael Fredianelli as I stumbled upon it here in 2025. I have to say that I didn't exactly harbor the biggest of expectations to the movie, given it's somewhat amateurish cover, plus the fact that I am usually not overly keen on the sci-fi genre. But still, since it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

Writer Michael Fredianelli put together a rather straightforward, but somewhat generic, sci-fi thriller. Sure, it was watchable for what it was, but it was by no means an outstanding storyline.

The cast in "Ultra Red" was all faces and talents that I wasn't familiar with, and that is actually something I do enjoy whenever I sit down to watch a movie, as the actors and actresses aren't associated with characters portrayed in other movies. The acting performances in the movie were certainly fair.

The effects in the movie were adequate. Sure, you're not in for anything grand or extraordinary in terms of special effects or CGI, but it was adequate enough for a movie of this caliber.

I am sure that diehard sci-fi fans will enjoy "Ultra Red" a lot more than I did as a casual viewer. But then again, I am not much of a sci-fi fan, truth be told.

This is, however, not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time.

My rating of writer and director Michael Fredianelli's 2023 movie "Ultra Red" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Absolutely dire.

The dialogue is cringeworthy, and made even worse by such poor delivery. Almost every word uttered sounds forced, contrived.

The plot is okay in general terms, but collapses once you get down to the detail. The main character continually overemphasises his sleaziness and rebel-without-a-cause temperament and ends up in a heavy-weapons fight with two crew-members all over a bottle of whiskey. In real life, such a misfit would never have been allowed anywhere near a NASA facility, let on board a mission to Mars.

Casting: Terrible - at least as far as the main characters are concerned. The minor players - such as the two pilots - should have been put in the major roles as they are clearly more competent and deserve better than this lousy movie. To be fair, though, most of the cast have been compromised by the awful script.

The directing isn't too bad, but as the old saying goes, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

One of the worst aspects of this film is the CGI. At times you'd think they'd used the stop-motion techniques employed in the "Jason and the Argonauts" movies of the 1960s.

Give this one a miss.

OK, full disclosure, I baled before the movie was ten minutes in.

The CGI is cringeworthy. The rover rolls its wheels straight through boulders. The gaseous alien is pixellated. The characters are straight out of a (bad) school drama assignment. The set dressing is as thin as tissue. The dialogue is painful.

The plot is wafer thin. The rover is broken. Only one man can repair it. He's in jail. He's a genius with the mental capacity of a cardboard box. He can learn to be an astronaut in 12 hours, from a guy who you wouldn't trust to punch the code into a carwash.

Seriously, if the rest of the movie is as bad as what I saw, it has stolen the crown from Plan 9 From Outer Space.

I need a lie down.

I realise this is a low budget movie but some things are just inexcusable. If the budget is small then at least get the zero cost stuff right. The acting seems so wooden it's like a high school production, but this seems to mainly due to the script which appears to have written by someone who isn't quite up to the job. Maybe a proof reader with at least grade 8 English could have fixed it. It does not greatly add to the budget to give your actors lines that don't make them sound like idiots and making an actor sound like an idiot destroys the character's credibility.

You might have thought that when an actor is presented with a line like "We'd still need to necessitate cooperation with Jack Walker" (4:53) they might say, whoa, stop, this needs some fixing. But no, they just plough on and it just keeps getting worse. I gave up long before the end so maybe the second half gets better.

Indie filmmaker Michael Fredianelli takes off from his usual comfort zone of earth bound tough guy cinema to explore the final frontier with a sci-fi movie set mostly in space. This microbudget production is an impressive one and many of the visual effects utilized are jaw dropping especially when it comes to the indie arena. Of particular standout is the segment of the film depicting the Mars surface-- Sci-fi geeks will only recognize the familiar Agua Dulce terrain when they're done marveling at how skillful (if obviously exaggerated for effect) a recreation of the red planet the film achieves. It makes Mars seem truly frightening in all its desolate rocky and dusty landscape. Similarly, the movie makes the cold vacuum of space seem equally as vast and scary and borrows much from the look and feel from the Hollywood sci-fi classic Alien.

Well there is no denying the technical achievements on display with Ultra Red, its biggest problem is its script. It utilizes a plot that very much resembles Star Trek's The "Naked Time" and its Next Generation follow up "The Naked Now" and deals with an extraterrestrial substance that effects the brain similarly to alcohol. However the way the substance is discovered and delivered comes off clear as day as a rather clunky MacGuffin. Furthermore, there are other problems with believability. The crew of the spaceship (NASA no less) in the movie is comically unprofessional and it wasn't enough for the lead character to be a genius rover vehicle designer, but also a master thief with a rap sheet a mile long as well. Other times, the film's technobabble just comes off poorly developed like when we're told that a futuristic weapon operates on the same principle as said rover which itself is more clearly modeled after present day technology. Now, I'm no scientist, but elements like that read more as pure kayfabe to me and took me out of the movie a bit.

While it's highly ambitious and impressive in many facets as well as highly entertaining for much of its running time, Ultra Red stumbles in too many places to be a clear win and instead comes off as a rather mixed bag.