The Colony
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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