Settlers Review: A science fiction film questions a Martian colony and then falls apart

Language is a slippery thing, and our subjectivity and lived experience can shape the definition of a word. Take the word “settlers”. In the United States, the word is historically associated with the European occupation of America and recalls a specific narrative: the expansive, unfriendly border, the aggressive act of bending the country to its will, and the acceptance of the vast expanses, ready to be tamed to become. The last element of Empty is the key to romanticizing staking an aspiration and the strongest component of the indie sci-fi western Settlers This is how she understands that corruption and colonialism go hand in hand.

The strangest element of Settlers, however, is how screenwriter and director Wyatt Rockefeller flips that understanding and then shapes the film’s heroes and villains through its distortion. It doesn’t feel like targeted subversion. Reminds something Passengers, another science fiction film in which the person presenting himself as the good one is not very much, Settlers is visually convincing (shot on location in the beautiful Northern Cape in South Africa) and competently shot. Rockefeller has a strong grasp of the space expansion themes of his genre as his characters settle on Mars. But while cinematographer Willie Nel emphasizes the barren nature of an alien world with slow pans over rugged mountains and rock piles, looks up into an inky black night full of stars and a disturbing sequence in an abandoned tunnel, Rockefeller struggles to shade his characters. their motivations or the trauma on earth that made them leave the planet.

Is the central family part of a larger group that is leaving the earth? Would the audience see them differently if they described themselves as “refugees” rather than “settlers”? How did the earth gain a negative reputation among the other planets in the galaxy? Does Mars have its own indigenous people? Why choose this planet when it is so inhospitable?

A script doesn’t have to answer every audience question – a film should exist on its own terms. but Settlers is so bare in these general world-forming details that its characters float freely, and a large reveal in the middle of the film seems like a narrative shortcut rather than an opportunity to delve deeper into the story. Other decisions, like breaking the movie into separate chapters named after different characters but always keeping one person’s perspective, feel like a thwarted opportunity to change things. Settlers begins with a captivating sense of mystery and a suspenseful attack scene that pays homage to the western roots of the film, but then empties from minute to minute to a disappointingly lackluster conclusion.

Set on Mars at a later date, Settlers revolves around a homestead difficult to revive its central family. Surrounded by sheer cliffs that regularly tumble into rock slides, under an omnipresent hazy sky and a burning red sun, father Reza (Jonny Lee Miller, strangely as a character with a traditionally Iranian name) and mother Ilsa (Sofia Boutella) do their best to look after themselves shield daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince) from the plight of her situation. Ilsa’s greenhouse is struggling to produce vegetables. You’ve tried breeding pigs for years and only have two. And the family clearly lives in fear of their surroundings.

A whistling wind, a squeaking gate door and knocking at night make for a certain routine. Reza grabs a rifle, Ilsa reaches for a knife and Remmy goes into hiding. The speed with which they do this suggests practice, and the frantic whispered conversations between Reza and Ilsa overheard by Remmy provide other details about the other people who might live on this planet. After that tense bang of an opening Settlers interrupts the family’s life by introducing Jerry (Ismael Cruz Córdova), whose piercing blue eyes on Chani. recall dune, and whose array of tattoos and scars suggest a rough life. He can help the settlement flourish again if the family lets him stay. It’s an offer they may not be able to refuse if they want to live. But Jerry’s presence drives Remmy to a rage that drives her curiosity about her surroundings into ruthlessness.

The device “stranger forces his presence on an isolated family” can go in completely different directions in dystopian or horror fare, from Z for Zacharias to It comes at night. but Settlers is frustrating for his lack of imagination about what could happen when a male underdog gets caught in the middle of a married couple, especially given the gritty script that frankly turns all of the film’s female characters into waiting. The film’s third act adds a grotesque fold to these relationships. It raises questions that Rockefeller tries little to answer, regarding the right to claim nature, and adds a gender element that the film’s characters cannot address with enough nuance.

All of this contributes to the fact that Boutella and Prince’s strong performances are wasted. The two actresses and Miller are tuned to the same fearful frequency. That early attack on their home, with Reza and Ilsa shouting information back and forth to locate a sniper while Rockefeller’s camera tracks their panicked, sprinting bodies, tapping that frequency and making the action exciting. Boutella has always balanced ferocity and fragility well, and Prince has impressively seething eyes.

But then Settlers introduces Jerry and immediately uses him as a battering ram on complicated ethical issues, and because of the hilariously named character (a possibly Martian named Jerry ?!) is so nebulous that Cordova’s performance suffers. A leap in time also envelops Remmy in opacity, reducing all of her essence to what her body can do. Even though Settlers told primarily from her point of view, the film doesn’t convey who she will become when she grows.

Movies could do worse than mimicking some of the narrative overlaps between Extraterrestrials and High life, but Rockefeller just repeats other science fiction instead of inventing big ideas of his own. The result are the most interesting ideas of the film – Ilsa sadly says of the earth: “We don’t know where we come from”; Terraforming as a genocide of sorts – go unexplored for a story low enough to suggest sexual assault as a character development. When Reza Remmy says that one day Mars “will be like Earth,” a bolder science fiction proposition would flip that line as a warning. Settlers is almost, but not quite, that movie.

Settlers opens in theaters and on VOD on July 23rd.