*. On a mission to continue the human race on a newly discovered Goldilocks planet, things go terribly awry onboard the spaceship Humanitas. The crew of multi-ethnic but English-only teens have had their drinking water spiked with drugs to make them more docile, and when they find out they stop taking their blue drinks. Once off their meds they instantly turn into horny and aggressive high-school students and, after getting rid of the one adult on the ship (a typically unhappy-looking Colin Farrell) it isn’t long before their hormones have them fucking and killing each other pretty much indiscriminately, all while maintaining a perfect mousse-to-gel ratio.
*. In other words, Lord of the Flies in Space. Which is a decent enough premise, though nothing new is done with it here and I found the whole thing obvious, slow-moving, and depressing. Not so obvious though that the clueless baby geniuses could figure out what was happening to them. I guess having the progeny of Nobel laureates in physics and M.I.T. bioengineers wasn’t much help. They’d have better spent their time reading English Lit and studying PoliSci.
*. A cast of pretty youngsters including Tye Sheridan, Fionn Whitehead, and Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny. Hey! I thought you needed to know science and stuff to get on this ship. Who let in the celeb spawn?
*. It’s always a bit off-putting to watch the offspring of famous actors breaking in. You can’t help looking at their faces and comparing them to their parents. I found myself doing this a lot watching Scott Eastwood recently in Wrath of Man. No doubt he’s Clint’s kid. As for Lily-Rose Depp, there’s an obvious resemblance there too. What I was most struck by though is how weird her eyes look. Of course they’re made up to look larger than natural, but even so they seem almost distorted. It’s like they put her face through some kind of filter.
*. As for the acting. it’s hard to say anything because the kids here are such test-tube oddities anyway. Depp has a stoned, sullen look that I’m guessing came with the part (nobody in this movie smiles). Or it may be her modeling background.
*. I found this movie to be a real grind to watch. It’s downbeat and predictable. The Great Teen Awakening is kind of erotic, and the wacky montages have a desperate, ridiculous charm, but that’s all the good I can say. The rest is just formula, down to the tried, tested, and true expedient of blowing the bad guy out an airlock at the end. When you can’t think of anything else to do, just go with the classics.
*. What I was looking forward to was a Philip K. Dick ending where it would all be revealed as a training run, with the spaceship never leaving Earth. No such luck. Instead, some pristine new planet is fated to be ruined by the third generation of our star seed. It looks nice from space but I’m sure it will take no time at all for this crew to make a hash of it.