Deus

I came upon this almost by accident and rolled my eyes at it till I saw Claudia black who has some credibility, listed in the cast. She does a good job with the material and gives a great performance throughout. Her performance gives her character some depth which in truth, the screenplay seems to miss somewhat, but she can't singlehandedly carry this one off. The script needs another once over with a fresh pair of eyes if I'm honest, as much of the dialogue is like something out of a comic book, cliched, meaningless and stilted.

The story is a reasonably good one if a little predictable, but the premise is sound. However there simply isn't enough going on to keep the interest focused, and the lengthy scenes and uneventful screenplay lend little to maintain interest.

The special effects, CGI are all decent, nothing to write home about, but they don't let the movie down the way the script and story line do. I'm always a little sceptical when the writer and director are the same individual since what is perceived in creation isn't always the best way to flesh it out on film, and here my concerns are warranted. One or the other is my rule of thumb and rarely does it bode well for a creation with a single person doing both.

I think much of the films forced ambiance are due to a lacking in direction, and some of the characters are way off base. 'Grey' and 'Sen' played by Black and Blackwood are a constant source of contention with no clear command structure seemingly in place. Its an odd way to spin a relationship in space with a mission of such importance, and it neither works here nor rings true. There are other weird glitches throughout the movie and it serves only to kink the smooth flow of events as they unfold on-screen. I found it most disconcerting.

Blackwood delivers the whole compliment of his lines through clenched teeth as though he's stemming the overflow of some long held rage with great difficulty. His stiff, stoic delivery makes him stand out as the weak talent in this cast of less than ten people. Again I think this is more due to bad direction rather than a failing of his talent, but irrespective, the movie suffers as a result. David O'hara by contrast plays his character to a 'T' and the other cast members with more minor roles are accomplished enough, but forgettable.

On the whole it's not too bad, but there just isn't enough going on here to bring off the story, and some of the cliched developments really do it a disservice.

I think 5 is an honest and fair score, for what is at best, a 'watchable' movie. Its not a big production so I don't want to be overly critical knowing it couldn't have been an easy one to produce, but I think the scant flesh on the carcass of this one is its big problem. It really needed some fleshing out before being served up to feast.

Not being a massive budget film, I was quite pleased with it.

I had two 'big' problems watching this, the first was "Si Rubin", the whole character and performance were pretty bad... The second problem I had was with the writing.

I feel that few more drafts would have perhaps helped, at times it really trails off... Now, few things really stood out like the cinematography and editing, both remarkable.

In fact I'd like to know on which camera it was shot on, please add it on IMDb technical space.

My dearest compliments on set design as well as costumes, they were incredibly good!

Another positive thing was the soundtrack as well as sound effects, both captivating.

Definetely a big step up from Mr. Stone's previous films. Keep it up!

P. S. Casting was very good as well!

OK. So we have to be realistic... SciFi films don't exactly must be scientifically accurate (yeah.. Darth Vader isn't real, right?). But at least show some coherence. A sphere is found in Mars orbit in a future far enough to hibernate people and wake them back, and build a really big ship with artificial gravity, then they took 8 months to reach Mars? I am pretty sure SpaceX will do better in a few years... And using hibernation for an 8 months trip in such a large ship with a handful of crewmates? Are you kidding me?

Cast was fairly good, and I am sure they spent a good deal of money in this film, yet the script is poor, to say at least. Don't waste your time as I wasted mine.

You can tell newb writer and director Steve Stone's inexperience was evident in this film, especially failing to direct his cast properly. Even Claudia Black looked lost in some scenes, and Richard Blackwood as the commander was just horrible and unconvincing in every scene, not to mention annoying. His demeanor, (lack of) facial expressions and body language, tone of voice and dialogue was just all wrong.

Conceptually the story was interesting, but it suffered plot and technical issues, and the slow pacing with many long dragged out and unnecessary scenes made the normally comfortable 90 min runtime feel much longer. It needed more story to fill in the time, or cut down to a short film. Much of the dialogue felt very amateurish, especially the AI, and writing could've used more suspense and action instead of constant cam views and cheesy cheap random shots.

The visuals however were decent for a low budget B film, and the score was excellent, especially for a B film, where the score is usually too loud, constant, annoying and unfitting.

As a huge sci-fi fan, I still enjoyed it, as I've seen much worse, and seeing it through till the end says a lot. For a low budget B film from a newb filmmaker, I'd say it's a decent one-time watch if you're a sci-fi fan. Had the actors been better cast and/or directed, this film would've been much better. Still, a generous 6/10 from me.

Just finished Deus after going in blind.

The whole thing felt like a Dr Who episode, just with tons of extra padding.

The plot was quite sloppy, and the effects had a "made for TV" feeling to them. The acting was pretty meh throughout, with some strange choices being made at times (when the main character learns a major plot twist their response is pretty emotionless).

They had access to a pretty good cast, but even that was wasted.

Some of the twists throughout were kind of dumb, and the rest were painfully obvious. Many of the plot points were needless and didnt add anything to the story at all.

I'm a sucker for sci-fi but this just felt very underdeveloped, like it was a second draft that they greenlit without any rework.

This could easily have been shrunk down to a 30 minute tv episode (with commercials) and still provided all the same info.

Not really worth the time unfortunately.