Refúgio

Solid produced post-apocalyptic movie with some serious trouble regarding logic, psychology/behaviour and world building - I read a lot of pulp fiction sci-fi novels and magazines back in my younger years, that got more science in their DNA despite being mostly adventure stories. Anyway, if you like such movies and shows, to mind comes The 100, Tribes of Europe and the like, this may do for you.

'Tides' or 'The Colony' is not a bad film. After a sloppy start which didn't make much sense, like a capsule drowning in water (that is full of air and is specifically designed to float), the absence of technical means for navigation or communication, the film starts to grow. The production quality is great, it looks and sounds really good, the location is solid. Some of the visuals reminded me of the Metro Exodus and Fallout games.

Then, around 30 minutes into the film, it turns into complete boredom after a sequence of vaguely motivated decisions. The problem is the predictability of the story. Every character, every plot thread, the ending - everything is so full of cliches you can pretty much recite the dialogue along with the characters. You know how it is going to end. In fact, I'm writing this review while still watching it, and it is really that predictable.

They don't really try to obscure it or provide an interesting twist. Like, come on, you can't cast Iain Glen and make him look like a good guy.

Anyway, now as the film is over, I can conclude my review. This film is everything you have seen before, plus some virtue signaling fueled by popular political ideas, making me think that it was probably made to fish out some festival awards.

Great production shell, but empty inside.

Wow, I don't think I have seen a film in the past few years with more clichés packed into the dialogue. And there is a lot of yacking in this film, so the clichés and predictable conversation becomes overwhelming.

And for Sci Fi one expects to suspend disbelief on even core elements, but one does not expect more plot holes than a sieve. A civilization that is doing interstellar travel hundreds of years more advanced than 2020 space efforts, but doesn't have landing technology of 1960's Mercury or Soviet Vostok????

Lastly, the acting except for Ian Glenn is atrocious, cringeworthy.

Dune, The Northman, The Colony... and surely there's more. All in the dark!

I'll give it a 6 because it's ok, but not surprising or original.

Worth watching? If you're a sci-fi fan, yes.

The world is wet, covered in perpetual mist, there is almost no color and everything is miserable and rotten.

I became fed up past the first thirty minutes and then spent the next fifteen clicking the 'Jump Ahead 10 Seconds' button looking for key scenes in order to see if things got any less dreary and dull, and to get an idea of the story thesis.

I can report that the sets become more interesting, (rotted big ships from a previous age form a depressing community), and there is something of a developing mystery in the story, featuring fascist leadership and poor waifs, etc. However, even with the power of "Skip Ahead" at my disposal, I found I just didn't care enough to see how the miserable tale played itself out.

Perhaps I've been spoiled, my brain re-wired by a diet of high-speed flashy films and peppy story lines. Maybe slow and dreary and damp are your thing. If so, this film is for you.

As for the thesis...

This film offers a vision of the world from the perspective of Climate Change alarmism. -Which is hard to take if you know anything about how C02 works on plant life; (you don't get endless mud flats and too much water), but who cares about science or facts? -Not the writers, who evidently envision advanced space faring humans capable of removing our species to a distant star system as apparently NOT capable of engineering a landing craft which doesn't look like an ancient Apollo capsule and which doesn't immediately sink to the bottom of the ocean upon touchdown and kill its occupants. Even in the 1960's we knew how to make more reliable space ships.

Tides offers lots of dreary 'feels' which don't care about your facts. Otherwise, the production values and acting were above average and the film made good use of a limited budget.

6/10 because honest craft went into this production.