Ultra Red

Stupid time-waster. Everything about it is wrong. Childish Special effects and worse acting. Decor is about to fall apart. Actually it was clearly an ultra bad idea to put this movie on. Just as it was a real bad idea to even produce it. Why bother to throw away any budget on a just terrible piece of thrash like this one is. If you want to throw away even more energy and time on a real dumb and stupid movie be my guest just don't come complaining I didn't warn you in advance please because I hereby do. I fell asleep a couple of times and the rest of the time I declared myself dumb and stupid to not press STOP and drop the thing in the trashcan.

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.

Cool futuristic spaceship sets, effects, cinematography, and engaging mystery plot around a strange alien entity on Mars become heavily undermined by how aggressively smug and unlikeable the main hero comes off right from the start of the film. Even more unfortunately, things don't get any better for him as he insults his way through the rest of the film, making lewd comments to his superiors even while on his multi-billion dollar Mars walk. This would be more forgivable if he demonstrates some kind of clever ingenuity to display why everyone else must tolerate his behavior, but he seldom really exhibits any competence whatsoever. His saving grace lies in the fact that he is surrounded by a similarly dismal group of self-centered numbskulls who don't even seem to care that much about the mission, their own lives, or the lives of their coworkers once they start getting bumped off. At least things never get predictable.

I did find the over-the-top lack of professionalism among the crew of an experimental United States Government funded spaceship to be an amusing commentary though on the current state of our top agencies. It may or may not have been the agenda that this film was going for, but it's the satirical bend of this movie that makes it the most worthwhile. I'm going to go ahead and give it a higher rating keeping this in mind, plus how impressive the movie looks when taking its tiny indie budget into consideration. It could easily have devolved into a silly Asylum type "sharks in space" sort of movie but never stoops to that level.

Keep an eye out for some eye-popping visuals and a couple cute aliens who pop by to liven things up. The overall story reminds me a lot of the two "Naked" Star Trek episodes (once the alien object starts to infect the crew in a way that causes them to lose inhibition and... you guessed it... behave even less-professionally), but even more so of the Doctor Who episode "Planet of Evil" in that the object seems to bring an evil corrupting alien presence with it which proceeds to pare the crew down to such a degree that one wonders how the ship remains space-worthy. I was a bit disappointed that it doesn't quite come together as handily as the Doctor Who episode or even delve too deeply into alien intelligence, life, or past civilizations, only to focus on the petty internal squabbling.

Also watch out for some random nudity late in the film that comes absolutely out of nowhere. Also keep in mind that there's a few over-the-top gory moments sprinkled in which may preclude younger viewers from jumping right in, unless their parents are into this sort of thing.

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.

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.