No.138 : The Colony (2015)

The Colony at the IMDb

My regular reader will remember that we have already reviewed a film called ‘The Colony' way back in Episode 114.

Fear not, no repeats on this channel, unless you are talking about the jokes. This is an entirely different ’The Colony’ and stars her off the Harry Potters. Which is the best Colony? Well read and find out. (it’s the other one).

Hermione plays an air stewardess  heading to Chile. The airline isn’t named and her nationality isn’t revealed so I’m guessing she’s English given no attempts are made at an accent. This is one of these inspired by true events’ films so they can basically make up what they like. Hernione, or ‘Lena’ to give her name in this is, paying a bootie call to her German boyfriend (Daniel Bruhl) whose character is conveniently called Daniel.

Daniel (the character) is a political activist and keeps himself busy designing posters for revolutionaries and attending rallies. Lena spots him from the airport bus and soon they are back at his apartment having very modest foo-foo. Their four days of delight are cut short when a military coup begins (well it is 1973) and they get rounded up. A man with a bag on his head grasses Daniel up and he gets carted off to the ‘Colony of Dignity’.

Lena makes some enquiries and after two minutes she is at the gate of said colony resplendent in a grey cardigan, a crucifix and slut shoes. They don’t do anything in the way of background checks at The Colony and she is immediately put to work peeling spuds. Daniel meanwhile is tired about being tortured all the time and pretends that the electric shocks have made him a mentalist. HUGE mistake. Next day the military show up and ask for a subject to test out the poison gas that The Colony is mixing up for them - and Daniel is the prime candidate.

Despite segregation the two manage to meet up and make plans to escape. Will they get away in an ending ripped off from ‘Argo’ or will they remain captive? (It’s the first one).

This was a decent enough film that passed the time but was in no way memorable or as statement making as it thought. Half an hour in they started a ‘Day 1’ caption that went up to Day 132. Although some were skipped it felt like we lived them all. There was no real point to this timetable as most of the stuff happened at the start or in the last few days.

The Colony was quite well realised but ‘The Cult’ would have been more appropriate - maybe they wanted to avoid confusion with the band? The cruel overlords led by Michael Nyqvist were good in a boo-hiss sense with his nastiness later being replaced by him being a total nonce. Boo hiss indeed.

Hermione was decent, but clearly the star of the show - even in the work camp she had nicely fitted blouses and platted hair to die for. She was also a bit stiff in the love scenes, with her main motivation being to keep the sheet as close to her chest as possible. Obviously this blog isn’t looking for titillation, but it does take you out of the scene when the character is coy about showing her boobs to the boyfriend she hasn’t seen for weeks. The Potter fan boys do get a couple of thrills especially when Lena is ordered to remove her blouse. A few expelianiouses in the fan boy pants there, I bet!

The eventual escape from the colony was a bit easy and the flight from Chile was too familiar. The closing captions said that basically nothing changed following the events of this film, which isn’t surprising as it appears to have been mostly made up. Worth a look, but no where near as much fun as the other ’The Colony’.

The Tag Line : 132 days of torture 55%

No.114 : The Colony (2013)

The Colony at the IMDb

 If you thought ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ lacked some mutant cannibals then this could be this film for you.

It is the future and it’s very cold. “The snow started and then didn’t stop” says the ominous voiceover - not sure how that would work but only the tops of street lights are peeking through the snow and no one has had their milk delivered for ages. We learn that most people are dead apart from small colonies living underground.

They manage to grow plants from their seed bank and have some rabbits but things are deteriorating fast. The rabbits have stopped shagging and Bill Paxton is on security detail. A recent flu bug killed 20 of the survivors and sniffles are now a near capital offence. Kindly leader Laurence Fishbourne puts anyone with a runny nose into quarantine and if they don’t get better they can have a bullet or a long walk into the icy wastes. Mentalist Bill prefers a bullet only prescription.

The colony keep in touch with other sites but Colony 5 have gone offline. Laurence takes a few men to check things out and warns Bill not to shoot anyone. The arduous trek across the frozen wastes takes about five minutes and fortunately for the budget Colony 5’s base looks an awful lot like Laurence’s Colony 7. No one answers the door and our heroes sneak in to take a look. They find loads of dead bodies and predictably one survivor who has gone a bit loopy.

A dig about finds a handy stash of dynamite as well as a recording of a transmission that suggests a thaw may be on the way. Sadly their luck runs out as they find a charnel house of mutant cannibals in the kitchen who are scoffing the colony’s former residents. After losing a few men Laurence and the young good looking one escape but with the cannibals in hot pursuit. Will they make it home and will what awaits them be worse than what they have fled? Will the climate reboot and will our heroes' values hold against a big man with pointy teeth?

This was a decent enough effort if you can overlook the thin plot and thinner characters. There is the usual gubbins about climate change but if you take this film as a portentous warning about what the future holds you are probably the kind of person who gets nutritional advice from Michael Moore. Essentially the whole film can be summarised as ‘group disturbs nest of cannibals and then gets chased home by them’. Not so much a movie plot as a game of tag.

The film does try to commentate on the human condition with the dehumanised Bill a foreshadow of the even more brutal cannibals. Towards the end when the gloves are off even those who seemed ‘normal’ end up chopping heads with a salad slicer. The gore is low key with the butcher house scene the worst although even that was so broad as to negate its impact. Fair enough cannibals can be sinister but these were the full leg waving chompers sitting amongst fires and piles of dismembered bodies. Subtle it is not!

Despite a low budget, that involved a series of endless tunnels which looked like a tribute to ‘Dr Who’, it was fast paced enough to keep me interested and the loss of a star after an hour signalled either a brave director or that the last few bucks had run out.

At a trim 90 minutes the film didn’t outstay its welcome and despite their ridiculousness I quite enjoyed the OTT troupe of permanently hungry people eaters.

THE Tag Line - Needs Heating Up  64%