Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.
- Awards
- 1 win & 4 nominations total
Featured reviews
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.
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.
When I first heard about this film I thought it was going to be like "It" (80's version, of course)or even "30 days of night". I love apocalyptic movies mixed with frozen world and eventually with monsters. Unfortunately, "The collony" turned to be another inconsistent and time- wasting entertainment movie. Yes, I'm talking about usual empty characters, boring plot and of course a good looking hero unable to express anything. A bit of action at the beginning but after knowing the villains you realize nothing good will come. Hollywood guys, please, you have huge resources, spend some more bucks on the script and on the casting and save on fx, anybody can create explosions on the computer but doing a good film is beyond that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you know
- TriviaThe first movie to be shot at the decommissioned NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) base in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
- GoofsIn the beginning of the movie a wind turbine is seen with wings having their trailing edge into the wind instead of its leading edge. The wings are either constructed for counter-clockwise rotation (in the movie the turbine rotates clockwise) or are pitched around 180 degrees. Either way, the turning of the turbine is impossible with this blade configuration.
- Crazy creditsDuring the end credits, the credits go forward instead of going backwards.
- ConnectionsFeatured in On Cinema: 'The World's End' and 'The Colony' (2013)
- SoundtracksThe Mirror Blues
Written by Duane Andrews
Performed by Duane Andrews and The Sinjawn Vipers
- How long is The Colony?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Vùng Đất Khắc Nghiệt
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $16,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $557,865
- Runtime1 hour 35 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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