currie-5

I watched this movie on the same day that I watched "Ares 11". Both had the same problem - they would have been better as part of an anthology series. That fact annoyed me a lot while watching "Ares 11" but a lot less so watching this one. This movie was a bit slow at times but wasn't boring overall. I'd prefer to give it 6.5

Most of the acting was good, but some of it wasn't. Some aspects of the story weren't very original, but I think it was put together in a somewhat unique way.

I liked the music a lot. It reminded me of 1950's Sci Fi and "The Twilight Zone". It helped set the right mood and tone. Being in black and white, it was probably supposed to have a 1950's look.

This is a mediocre movie with a premise that's been done before. It would have been better as part of an anthology TV series than a movie. At least that way it would have only been 50 minutes and they could have skipped over the time killing techno-babble. If it had been part of "The Outer Limits" in the 90's, it would have been a reasonably good episode.

The movie has a few other problems as well. Some of the characters are typical stock characters. The way people act sometimes doesn't seem realistic. Sorry to pick on him, but David Hyland's acting is not very good. Even worse is Eric Bell, but at least has a very small part. (The rest of the cast is descent given what they had to work with.) It's set near Mars but has nothing to do with Mars. There is a back-story about an interplanetary conflict that contributes nothing to the actual story. And the ending is unsatisfying.

Getting out of the pits is not intuitive so beginners keep falling back in. Once I learned how to do that, the game play was fine. I came to really enjoy playing it.

But this was the Atari 2600. None of the games were fantastic.