The Colony

I guess I'm just a sucker for anything that remotely reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing. This doesn't really resemble The Thing in any significant way. A group of survivors in a world now defeated by the continual falling of snow try to make the most of their dilemma. I would have to say this is closer to something like 30 Days of Night than The Thing. I also thought of the rather mediocre, forgettable Whiteout (dealing with Arctic conditions at an enclosed place) , except those dealing with the terror of The Colony are these rabid vampire like human monsters on the rampage. I can already envision yawning upon immediate impact of the very description I laid out. When we get long shots of cityscapes (and a bridge) now buried under the snowfall, The Day After Tomorrow come to mind. In earnest, to me The Colony is a basic assemblage of ideas, both visually and literary, seen in the past. If there had been some imaginative touches that separated it from movies it seems to imitate or resemble, I might have cleaved to it. As is, I just felt rather apathetic to it all. Unfortunate.

Unfortunate because it has two actors I love to watch on screen...Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton. Neither have characters that give them much to work with. Fishburne is the authoritative voice of their colony, while other colonies exist in isolated locations. One "partner" colony seems in need of help, with Fishburne asking for two volunteers to join him in a search mission to see if those located at that facility are okay...they're not. Fishburne is Briggs, with an integrity and presence that is respected and held to a high standard, while Paxton's Mason seems comfortable as the one responsible for security of the colony and more than willing to shoot down virus-infected humans (their choice, upon discovery of this seemingly untreatable virus, is to either be shot or brave the cold with certain frozen death; easy choice, right?). Paxton, by film's end, is stuck with a coward just wanting to save his neck, not beyond locking members of his colony out to survive approaching human vampires. He gets what's coming to him in the grand tradition, complete with the following, "Leave him here." Actually, Paxton, while stupid for not following the remaining survivors in a ventilation shaft (the most convenient escape exit in the movies), facing the powerful human vampires breaking through the door barely holding them out, does go out relatively heroically. Fishburne is a victim of circumstance...wrong place, wrong time, although this film milks the "fuse goes out before detonating" event as to allow him to go out "with a bang" (sorry, couldn't resist).

Sam is about to go with Briggs on the search into the partner colony.

In the film, Kevin Zegers (as the young hero, Sam) and Charlotte Sullivan (as Kai, in charge of their colony’s items depot) are young adult lovers who found each other during the dire circumstances of the never-ending snowfall that has left the globe in crisis.

Sam, Briggs, and Graydon looking ahead to Colony 5

I had mentioned The Colony had brought to mind The Day After Tomorrow, no more so than the exterior CGI shots of outside structures peeking out from the snow, as Sam, Briggs, and Graydon (Atticus Dean Mitchell, basically a kid manning up the best he can in a potentially scary visit to Colony 5) head for their partner colony.

 

What I always thought horror/action hybrids seem to do well is allow a rather unconventional hero to find his inner savage during a retaliation after a major beatdown. The ferocious vampire leader of his diseased pack of wolves just abuses Sam for minutes and it looks dire only for him to find his will to survive when all hope seems lost. When I say unconventional, it is one of those fresh-faced, forever young pretty boys that seem to unearth the warrior from within.

The goods. Remember 30 Days of Night? I had mentioned it. While the vampires in that film slaughter an Alaskan town, in The Colony its those held in the contained environs of a rather unflattering facility. Certainly there's something terrifying in being caught in a building, even if filled with a network of rooms designed for surviving the outside elements but not in comfort. That's where The Thing seemed most familiar in my mind to this. Swap aliens with vampires and there you go...The Colony.

When Sam, Briggs, and Graydon enter the facility of Colony 5, it's dank, wet, dark, ominous, with an eerie quiet (that is until they encounter a survivor frightened out of his wits) and a whole group of people missing. Blood on the walls and floors indicates a struggle the colonists must've lost, but where are they? Aliens (when the commandos land on the colony planet and search for the colonists stationed there) and The Thing (when a small accompaniment of the American Antarctic base search through the Norwegian camp) both came to mind instantly during the beginning of this. It's hard not be successful with a scene like this because searchers see the aftermath of an attack and there's that thought that comes to mind, "What happened here and when will the ones we are following wind up facing this dangerous threat?" 

 The trio soon find what happened to the colonies. A group of volatile savages have laid waste to the colony, with a large mass of body and body parts in bloody piles. I had mentioned that these are human vampires. I guess you could consider them more like human carnivores. Something has been lost--they're humanity as hunger set in and the food ran out--and they are no longer human. They used knife sharpeners to give themselves fangs, chop up humans not gonzo with sharp knives, swords, and hatchets, and appear to be totally feral; the hunt and results of it are what seems to drive them.

I mentioned Laurence Fishburne doesn't have much of a part, but he does have a nice monologue about how humans become carnivores when pinned up in a stadium during a "relief effort" as he and Mason were witness to the madness as it unfolded, getting out and vowing to not let that cataclysm happen again under their watch. This movie also allows Fishburne to kick a lot of ass, using a pitchfork quite effectively, and lighting sticks of dynamite in the effort to destroy or hold back the human vampires after them. Once Fishburne leaves the film, I have to admit that I sort of did. Or at least my enthusiasm dropped off. He has one hell of a heroic exit. He wears all that horror on his person, and Fishburne leaves a great deal of that behind once he's gone. The rest of the film once the bridge is dynamited runs through the usual...the killers descend upon the colony in their sights, take a few out with them, and the remaining survivors face a daunting future that seems doomed by the ongoing, never-ceasing winter.

Bleak look of the future as in The Colony could be considered passé by those who have seen this on their screens over and over. The presentation is so that it can at times compensate, but ultimately the ending isn't that staggering...if anything it's expected.