Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Colony’ on Netflix, Sci-Fi With Questions About Society And Survival On A Watery Future Earth

The Colony (Netflix) is a boutique sci-fi entry from Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum that competed at the 71st Berlin Film Festival under its original title of Tides. While Hell, Fehlbaum’s 2011 debut, was post-apocalyptic in nature, The Colony is at least partly post-Earth. In the near future, an explorer is sent back to our planet to search for encouraging signs of life…

THE COLONY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “Climate change, Pandemics” – uh-oh, this doesn’t sound promising – “War. When Earth became uninhabitable, the ruling elite escaped to settle on Kepler 209.” And with that introduction, we join the crew of the Ulysses 2 as they make hard landfall on an Earth ravaged by monstrous storms and surging ocean tides. It’s been two generations since the settlers of Kepler departed, and in that time their people have been rendered infertile. Their missions back to Earth hope to discover if the planet is habitable and capable of sustaining life, but that’s not an exact science. Ulysses 1 was destroyed, and Ulysses 2 is soon down to one crewmember, Blake (Nora Arnezeder), who is quickly captured by a muddy band of survivors. In flashbacks, we learn that Blake’s father (Sebastian Roche, Big Sky) was an astronaut on Ulysses 1, as well as a few facts about Kepler society. They see themselves as a whole, the rightful many, and therefore just in their efforts as colonizers.

Blake’s captors have enemies of their own. This larger group is better equipped, operating out of a decrepit supertanker, and it bears a connection to the first Ulysses mission in Gibson (Iain Glen), whose motives as a bringer of civilization to the unwashed children of Earth are superficially noble and more deeply suspicious. As Blake observes his operation, she forms a bond with Narvik (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), whose daughter Gibson abducted, and begins to reconsider her own status, both as a woman and a colonial explorer on a planet and in a society that – for better or worse – has been getting by just fine without the people who chose to leave all those generations ago.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? How about a sci-fi sampler pack? Take the menace of human infertility from Children of Men, the climactic foraging of Interstellar, and throw in a dash of Ripley’s journey toward motherhood in Aliens, too. Then add Brad Pitt’s quest to find his father in Ad Astra, and the interplanetary consequences of searching the stars to save humanity.

Performance Worth Watching: Iain Glen, or Ser Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones, is mostly in Dr. Alexander Isaacs mode here, the genetic researcher from the Resident Evil films whose clinical veneer obscured his more nefarious intentions.

Memorable Dialogue: “It looks like my TSH levels have recovered,” Blake reports once she has spent a few days on Earth, which is significant, since Kepler is searching for thyroid stimulating hormones and other physical indicators of human fertility.

Sex and Skin: Blake is handed a mewling baby within hours of her arrival on Earth, so at least she knows sex has been happening around these parts, which is much more than she can say for the galactic ex-pat civilization of Kepler 209.

Our Take: Science fiction isn’t easy when you’re on a limited budget. But with The Colony, director Tim Fehlbaum and director of photography Markus Forderer are able to establish the scope of their premise with a mix of small details – Blake’s technologically advanced equipment – and great swaths of churning gray water and inky black mud. Earth has become one big estuary, and the rising tides determine the fate of these fledgling groups of survivors; appropriately, Forderer soaks each frame of The Colony in wet, sopping murk. It’s an effective means of evoking bigger themes inside a smaller space, and that’s before we get into the rusted staterooms and creaky superstructure of the tanker Gibson and his henchpeople call home. Life on Kepler is only presented as a sketch, and there isn’t any CG spacecraft here. Instead, it’s a story with intergalactic themes told at ground level.

The Colony doesn’t give Nora Arnezeder as Blake a very clear path, obscured as it is by water, mud, and a script that wishes to convert her from dutiful colonizer to liberated female freedom fighter in the space of a few days. But along the way it does consider Kepler’s moral compass from a few different angles, and seems to think humanity on earth has enough vitality to weather whatever storms may come. The supporting turns from Glen and Roche are strong, and even if it shares a bumpy landing with Ulysses 2, The Colony is satisfying science fiction on a boutique scale.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Colony offers a hodgepodge of themes, but achieves physical scale for its sci-fi premise with moody cinematography and a probing screenplay.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges