- Directed by: Mark Fischbach
- Written by: Mark Fischbach, David Szymanski
- Stars: Mark Fischbach, Caroline Kaplan, Troy Bake
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 5 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4sh-Dw4bzg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
In a far future where “The Quiet Rapture” is making stars and space stations and populated planets vanish, a convict is sent to explore a moon covered with a vast ocean of blood in a clunky submarine in the hopes of finding something to help mankind survive.
For it being two hours plus of mostly just a guy in a room, a lot goes on. The acting, story, and effects are great. It’s that two hours plus that we both thought was its only real fault. It’s on the long side.
Spoilery Synopsis
We’re told about the end of civilization and that they might be able to survive on a planet’s moons. One moon seems special since it has an ocean of blood; maybe there’s life there. We see a man wearing a cloak in what appears to be a submarine. He’s a convict, and this is some kind of redemption mission. “You did test this thing right?” “This is the test,” the radio explains. All they have are surface scans, and they don’t know what they’re going to find under the surface.
He descends to the maximum depth and then stops. The radio cuts out, leaving him on his own. He figures out the camera and finds a map. He figures out how to make the sub move and gets going as credits roll.
He’s not sure, but it looks like there are living creatures swimming around outside his ship. He also hears things out there. Yes, the thing outside is attacking the sub, and he gets knocked all over the place.
He gets on the radio and reports seeing a skeleton on the bottom. The people on the surface get really excited, and they bring him back up. He’s welded inside the thing, so they don’t have time to switch him out for another pilot. The captain explains that this is really important and that he really has no choice. They’re changing his deal.
He turns on the camera, which blasts all the people outside with radiation– it’s an X-ray camera since you can’t see through blood, but he didn’t know that because they didn’t tell him. They send him back down. There’s someone new on the radio now; the others had to get radiation treatments.
The prisoner sees someone inside with him, but that might only be a hallucination. He finds a note: “Cross the wires.” When he does, a computer activates, and he learns about a previous mission where the pilot died. He takes more pictures, and that skeleton from earlier is gone now. The captain gets back on the radio and says again that he’s the first one they’ve sent down. They argue over whether or not humanity is done for.
He finds the skeleton again, and this time, they want him to grab a sample. He needs to ram the skeleton with the ship, and it’ll grab a piece of it. They start to bring him back up, but something grabs the ship.
When he wakes up, the power is mostly off, but he finds a light and learns that the sub has a basement level. He finds the dynamo and gets the power back on. He explores a bit, but then there’s a hull breach, and he gets blood from outside splattered on himself. Oh, and there’s a fire as well.
Once he gets all that under control, he starts mapping the ocean floor and goes through a cave. He sees more of those big living creatures outside and finds another submarine. Somehow, he makes radio contact with the people on that sub. Ava, on the other ship, says the light was what caused the Quiet Rapture and the end of the universe. They might have some answers as to why that happened.
There’s a lot of talking, but then Simon notices the speaker has been unplugged the whole time. Are the aliens talking to him? He gets a weird bloody vision.
The captain calls him back again, and suddenly, the speaker is plugged in again. She says it’s been days and he should have run out of oxygen long again. She says they aren’t going to bring him back up– they just want to observe now. When she learns that he found the missing SM-8 sub, they get really interested. “If you want it, you have to get me out!” She promises to get in another sub and meet him in 30 minutes. It sounds really important– all of humanity will be saved.
Simon returns to the dead sub and starts the process to recover the other ship’s “black box.” He’s running out of oxygen and has a hard time functioning. The voice on the recording says the oceans are actually made of blood– human blood at that. So maybe that’s where everyone has been disappearing to.
As Ava approaches, he hears her, but he also hears the alien voice, and they contradict each other. The crawlspace under the sub is slowly filling with blood, but Simon has to go down there and retrieve his own black box. He ties it to the life preserver he found, but by this point, the entirety of the ship is covered in blood and growing gross things all over. Simon himself starts growing into the ship.
The ship is destroyed. The black box, however, has been recovered.
Brian’s Commentary
I was not aware going in that this was based on a video game; I’ve not heard about that one. I’d recommend subtitles for this one, as the voices on the radio are very garbled and often hard to understand.
What was the deal with the X-Ray contamination? I thought that would lead to something more than just yelling.
It’s a really good concept, with good acting from the start, and the set is perfect for the story. It’s just too long, though. The last half hour is really hard to understand what’s going on. There’s just too much here that’s not explained (maybe it’s in the videogame?).
The first hour and a half is good, but the last part was incomprehensible.
Kevin’s Commentary
I was glad of the subtitles. The radio voices tend to be garbled, and Simon mumbles a lot with echoey acoustics in the sub.
I can see how they set the record for most fake blood used in a movie production.
Mark Fischbach is great in the role, the story is good, and the setting and effects are very cool. I liked everything about it except the length; I thought it could have been tightened up timewise.
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