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.

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.

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.

I cant rate it because we don't have the entire film available to us here in Australia. What we have is an abominable English language overdubbed version. The dialogue sounds TERRIBLE. It feels like a bunch of simple-minded robots exchanging flat dialogue with pretty much zero or faked emotional nance. Stiff, bland, boring dialogue.

Who knows what the real film feels like? It might be poetic in Russian.

Gone with the deleted original dialogue are all of those smaller sounds that are captured by the microphone on set. As a result the sound design is now lacking.

CGI is good, as is the score. Again, because of the overdubbed version, it's hard to determine even if the casting is good. It looks like it's not, but to be fair we are not hearing any dialogue from the actors we see. Amazon Prime, you cheap numbskulls, let us have the original language option.

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...