- Directed by Flying Lotus
- Written by Jonni Remmler
- Stars Eiza Gonzalez, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvM-guXIFLM
- Get it now: https://amzn.to/4iYJyf7
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This one is a bit of a mystery as the main character wakes up with a foggy memory and tries to piece together what happened on a space station with failing power and multiple bodies. Which gives it a video game quest vibe at times. But things gradually come together as she, and the viewer, figures out what happened and why. The cast is good, the story is compelling, and the effects are excellent. We really liked it.
Spoilery Synopsis
Riya has flashing visions of people’s heads melting and exploding; it’s all very graphic. The computer announces, “Abnormal activity detected. Systems failure. Reboot.” She wakes up on the floor with blood on her hands. She walks down the hallway, noticing blood handprints and dead bodies everywhere.
She goes outside, and it’s raining ash. She finds more bodies scattered about. She looks up and sees something amazingly weird. Credits roll.
She finds that she’s having trouble breathing and barely makes it back inside.
Flashback time. Adhi, Kevin, Davis, Clarke, and Riya eat Brion’s Beans, referring to a guy still up in orbit, and talk about who’s going to be the first one outside. They’re the first ones on this planet, ever. The atmosphere is almost breathable, and it may be the best find yet for potential colonization.
Back in the present, Riya washes the blood off and wonders, “Who am I?” She walks through the ship, reading notes and watching videos.
Suddenly, the computer announces that there’s movement outside the airlock. There’s someone outside banging on the door to get in. Riya attacks the man when he comes in, but quickly finds it’s Brion, who has come down to the surface. He got their distress call; something about Clarke having a psychotic break. She explains that by the time she woke up, everyone had been killed. Other than that, she doesn’t remember anything.
Brion tells her that Earth is dying, and they sent out seven expeditions to find a new home. This planet, Ash, is where they sent the seventh ship. He remained aboard the mothership to establish communication with home, but now he’s come down to investigate. He does a medical scan on Riya, and says she’s got a concussion, but is otherwise fine other than the memory loss and minor wound on her forehead that the automatic surgeon robot fixes up.
Riya keeps hallucinating the dead faces of her crewmates; could she have been the killer? They wonder where Clarke went, could she still be alive outside? The station is slowly running out of oxygen, so they need to get back up to the orbital. The launch window is in twelve hours.
There’s a sandstorm outside, and they get a hull break that needs to be repaired, as they’re losing more oxygen. She fixes the hole, but they have even less time now. They have to leave in five hours, so they may never get any real answers about Clarke.
Riya watches recorded footage from the group going outside in their suits. They found a deep tube; someone, but not humanity, has built terraforming equipment on the surface, which is why there’s so much oxygen in the air. Davis drops something into the tube, and it explodes with strange energy, killing him.
Riya admits to Brion that she thinks it was her who killed the others, but she doesn’t know why. She wants to stay on the base to get her memory back, but their time-frame for leaving is running out. Brion points out that they’ve found alien technology, and this is about the survival of the species, not just her memories.
She remembers more about killing Adhi, but now it looks like he was attacking her and it was self-defense. She goes through the ship and finds Brion, dead, with his head broken up. Clarke is there, in a suit, and she attacks Riya. Riya eventually beats Clarke, using the suit against her.
Riya does a post-mortem on Clarke, but doesn’t find any weird alien contagion.
The computer announces that the orbital lineup window is now open, so she has to hurry to the lander to get up to the mothership. The computer on the lander is as messed up as the one on the base, so she goes back to the base.
She puts Brion’s body in the medical scanner, and it reports that he’s been dead for 51 hours. Who has she been talking to all this time?
“Unusual lifeform detected” announces the computer. It’s Brion. He explains that he’s part of her now. He shows her what happened in her mind. Riya’s crewmates found something alive inside the circuitry of the computer, some kind of alien worm. Brion arrives, and they all talk about the creatures. Adhi decides they need to get off the planet before the thing spreads. Riya argues that they should stay anyway.
The self-replicating lifeform jumps right up Adhi’s nose and takes possession of him. Then he attacked, and she killed him with Kevin’s help. The creature, however, then crawled into Kevin and did the same with him. Kevin then killed Brion and beat Clarke severely. Clarke then rushed out to the lander. Riya then stabbed Kevin to death and then the alien entered her. She took poison, but passed out rather than dying, and that’s the point we saw her waking up from in the beginning.
Back in the present, the alien speaks inside her head. “This is our planet. We will not let you take it. Your species is inefficient and doomed to self destruction. All we need is one of you. You have been chosen to join the many.”
Riya hops into the medical scanner and sets it to “excise parasite.” She passes out in pain, since there’s apparently no anesthesia. It yanks the worm right out of her head, but then it crawls into Brion’s body, and it goes into full “The Thing” mode, with tentacles and everything.
The monster chases her through the ship, getting crazier-looking with every step. She eventually burns it with a flamethrower and extra oxygen. She then goes back to the lander, which is working now, and takes off.
As she approaches the orbiter, she thinks about her dead friends. Happy ending for her!
…except for the mid-credit scene, which isn’t so happy.
Brian’s Commentary
While all the red and blue light sources look cool for a movie, that’d make me insane after a few hours. In the future, they won’t have white light bulbs anymore, I guess. What’s with the equipment speaking Japanese on an all-American base?
Those are maybe some of the most alien aliens we’ve seen. Very cool.
Other than the funky lights, the special effects, gore, and sci-fi stuff all look great. The plot is a mystery: what’s going on and why. This could almost be taken as a sequel to “The Thing” as the aliens could be related.
This was really good!
Kevin’s Commentary
Science fiction horror is one of my favorite genres when it’s done right, and I thought that this one was. It builds nicely as we gradually piece together what’s going on and what’s causing it. The creature effects were nightmare fuel, very effective, and did remind me of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” with a dash of 2017’s “Life” and a bit of Lovecraftian elements. And I didn’t mind the colored lights.
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