The Colony

This movie is suffering from what I'd like to call the Game of Thrones effect; the way the ending defines a person's lasting opinion regardless of what came before. GOT was freakin' amazing, but to many people it is a festering pool of lameness, because the last series (or 2) was written by a spoon.

The Colony is kinda the same. I can honestly say, for the entire first half of the movie I was thinking: this movie doesn't deserve a 5/10. It has a solid post-apocalyptic atmosphere, an interesting somewhat-innovative premise, decent acting, and an intriguing story with good tension building. The CGI was a bit weak in places, but I didn't care because I was adequately immersed. Reading the other reviews, I think most people felt the same. So 50% of this movie is a solid 7/10 ... for real post-apocalyptic fans maybe even an 8/10.

The problem is, after the real enemy is revealed, the tension rapidly drops away and a simple bland survival story begins. There's nothing at all innovative from here on. The action is underwhelming and the enemy is also underwhelming (but they're clearly not zombies as one reviewer thought). Sure, there are multiple holes in terms of realism and believability, but they're the same flaws 100 other higher scoring action movies have made. Also the possibility of the interesting apocalypse-reversal was not explored. Basically, it was just generic not-too-terrible lameness. This part of the movie was a disappointing 5/10.

So yes, as a result of the ending the overall experience is disappointing ... but honestly I think the first half was special enough to justify watching the movie, especially if you're a post-apoc fan. Sit down, forget the IMDB score, pretend it's a hidden gem, and enjoy the first 45 minutes. When you sense it's starting to get lame, which it unfortunately will, crack on with your doom scrolling or whatever you personally do when TV loses your attention.

This might seem like odd advice but IMO, as a post-apoc fan, the beginning has stayed with me somewhat and I feel it'd be a shame to not give it a go.

This movie piqued my interest because it reminded of movies such as The Thing and Dawn of the Dead, and of games such as The Swarm. I found the setting of the movie, an underground base effectively surviving underneath a frozen world, a good basis for a story. However, the plot itself does not explore the world and the background story.

When the movie started, I found myself thrown amid a bunch of clichés. The narrative simplistically explains how the apocalypse, in this case a frozen world, came about. The premise of the plot is that a team of three people from one base, in response to a distress signal, journey to help another base. This is where the help squad encounters its initial enemy, and the squad inevitably ends up luring the enemy back to its own base. Other clichés include a power struggle for leadership, and the movie trying to leave the backstory undeveloped to shroud the audience with a mysterious atmosphere. I found similarities between The Colony and Oblivion, including the narrative, the initial encounter with enemies, and the lack of answers. There are many other clichés that are scattered about the movie, including scenes on a decaying bridge, and scenes involving escape.

As for the special effects and the cinematography, I did not find them particularly special or bad. The whole movie reminded me a bit of The Dawn of the Dead and The Thing, both of which are better than this movie. It did not make up for the lackluster plot with its visuals, and it did not make me feel anything.

If you have seen The Dawn of the Dead, The Thing, or anything similar, you have already pretty much seen this movie. The Colony is only worth watching on Netflix.

Interesting atmosphere, solid set of actors, good opening of movie which draws you somewhat in, waiting what will happen next.

Solid graphics...

Film moves on and somewhere in the end of first third of it, CUT!.

Its like somebody came in to the set and said: "Wrap it up guys, we are closing!".

End is terrible, and over all everything that happens in first part of the movie is blown in the rest of the movie.

Nothing special, already seen, and definitely not gonna see it again. Not even recommended.

Its like short B-movie based on a short survival comic book story. Like I said i don't see what they where thinking, or what went wrong and who is a guilty party.

Graphics, actors, set, atmosphere, story, it all holds separately as parts of good movie but all together just fails terribly.

I don't know what the makers were thinking, why will you cast Lawrence Fishburn if you're not going to use it in any meaningful way?.

The movie portraits humanity after the ice age has begun. The Colony only explains partially what happened to the planet and why we as humans destroyed it burning all the fossil fuel which contributed to a new ice age, all humanity is lost and the only remains are some "colonies" beneath the earth.

The starting point is quite good, the first minutes of the movie too. Although it is clichéd, it is standard sci-fi, it develop it's characters sufficiently enough but then.. it speeds up its downward spiral once the "enemies" appear on the scene.

The movie has an incredible change of pace once the enemies arrives with poorly execution on the director's side and just god awful fight scenes... Hardcore music and slaughter, i'm in the 80's again?, is this a joke?, I could accept that kind of embarrassment on a B low movie, I just can't accept it in a movie with Lawrence Fishburn that began as well as this one.

It's like the director throw away the script and said "just put the rock music and kill everyone, because that's cool!"... He appears to just shoot himself in the foot with the directing the movie takes.

It goes without saying that this was actually an incredible missed opportunity to tell a interesting story of the survivors of humanity... and a potential hope for the story.

The conclusion to this mess is, kill your opponents swiftly and survive.

I wanna kill myself for wasting all this time. How can they ruin their own potentially good story is beyond me. It seems Hollywood is full of stupid people that takes stupid decisions in the making of movies these days.

Avoid it, if you want to see killing, see it with some meaning added to it. If you want action and scares, go watch Dawn of the Dead, is 1000 times better than this horrendous mess.

I hadn't even read the synopsis for the movie before picking it up at the local secondhand DVD store. All I saw was what looked like an arctic disaster movie and one that had both Bill Paxton and Laurence Fishburne on the cast list.

Director Jeff Renfroe manages to start out with a rather impressive feat of establishing a very interesting setting and a fair story, along with some detailed characters. But that all changed to the worse and the movie fell into mediocrity once it was revealed what had happened to the inhabitants of the neighboring colony. I just didn't like that approach to the story one bit, it was just ludicrous.

I liked the arctic setting of the movie, and the visual effects department did manage to make it look realistic and that did a lot for the movie. Because if a movie like this had poor effects and CGI it would just collapse like a poorly constructed card house.

Kevin Zegers didn't really have what it took to deliver in this movie, and as such then he wasn't a strong main actor for the movie, which did slow down the movie a bit. He is usually an adequate actor, but didn't really pull it off in "The Colony". It was without a doubt Bill Paxton who were the one carrying the movie, despite having only a secondary role in the movie. Laurence Fishburne was there simply because he is Laurence Fishburne.

It was a shame that director Jeff Renfroe opted for that approach to the incident of the neighboring colony, because it was a severe crippling blow to the movie. "The Colony" had potential, but it was abruptly cut down by the direction in which the story went.