Survivor (2014)

Truly Dreadful Film

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I thought this was decent movie of its genre -- better than a lot of the other ones I have seen. Considering what were probably budgetary constraints from being a kick-starter project, I think it was actually pretty good. While not on par with $100 million films, I would never have guessed its source of funding from watching the movie.The story was not the most original, but it is pretty difficult to find one that is completely original anymore. Seven ships left Earth when there was a catastrophe. They went different directions via wormholes and are looking for a new home. We are introduced to a generation of young folks who have never experienced anything other than life on the ship in space. They are training under the direction of Capt Hunter (Kevin Sorbo) for the day when they find a new potential home.A signal is detected and on the way to investigate, the scout ship with said young people and Capt Hunter is pretty much destroyed with the surviving passengers scattered all over the landscape. The heroine, Kate (Danielle Chuchran)then has to overcome a bunch of obstacles to survive. The rest of the story is mostly about how she deals with those obstacles. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I actually did like the ending (though it was somewhat predictable).For the most part, I thought the acting was very good. The 2 main performers in the 1st half of the movie (Chuchran and Sorbo) did very well. Sorbo did spend a lot of time not moving around much, but Chuchran was pretty active and made up for it. Rocky Myers didn't actually show his face until probably about halfway through, but he did a good job too. The other actors were mostly supporting roles (I did want to smack the whiny guy a number of times -- if that was his goal, then he nailed it).The special effects were a lot better than some of the ones I had seen on B-Movie sci-fi night (what my late wife and I called the cheap movies on the SyFy channel). Most of the movie had no special effects to speak of, mostly some reasonably decent monster makeup. However, when there were some FX scenes, they were generally done pretty well. Nobody will mistake the FX in this movie for a $200 million Marvel Comics movie, but it would be entirely unfair to try to compare it to one. I think they did pretty well with what they did.The story wasn't incredibly original, some of it was very predictable for anyone who has seen similar movies, but the actual dialog was pretty good and (IMO) believable (as much as dialog can be in a sci-fi world). While not exceptionally deep, the characters were human and they came across that way.Overall I'd give this a 7.5/10 (I rounded up to 8). It ain't going to win any Hugo awards, but it is actually better and more entertaining than some of the larger budget movies that have hit the big screen and certainly a lot better than the grind-house sci-fi that ends up on MST3K. It's worth a watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

It really is a bad movie, but if you're into mocking bad movies this is ripe with material for you. The story is slow and the dialog is terrible. The first half of the movie the main character runs around a lot. #### spoiler alert #####The movie is a total knockoff of The Time Machine (They travel to the future and the underground dwellers eat the surface dwellers).Moving on....My favorite scene is after the ship crashes and they revive their friend with three chest compressions just so they can tell her she's going to die.... and then she dies. I also enjoyed how they fall to earth and don't burn up in the atmosphere, and the bow and arrow that disappears and reappears.

I like Kevin Sorbo, he plays the low key hero well. Its just unfortunate he does as many poor roles as he does good ones and I feel he is well under used here instead relying on pretty faces, glossy shots, odd music, dodgy background story, nonsense ongoing story....The story is a pretty basic SciFi stable - mankind messes up the planet, searches for a new one, finds more than they bargained for. Nothing wrong with that except the way they messed it up was pretty non-sensical even in a budget SciFi flic - adjusting Earth's orbit via particle accelerators and creating wormholes throughout the galaxies!!?!?!Err...no on many levels!...and explained in the blink of an eye before falling in to the trap of 'pretty people, ridiculous personal dramas, overly glossy shots...etc' rather than concentrating on quality of the script and screenplay to make up for the lack of £€¥$¢One of only 7 ships, long since lost alone in space, tracks a signal and sends a dropship into a wormhole, where of course disaster strikes and the ship is lost leaving the few survivors (oddly all young, bright tweens, plus for some reason the main ships captain!) stranded on the alien world.Cue hostile humans and monstrous humanoids (and a Horse!!!), all of which appear without any questions from the protagonists...and the humans speak perfect English despite initially having their own language! (I'm surprised it took so long for the survivors to work out the twist - ps Its Earth!)The film then turns in to a montage of scenes in which Danielle Chuchran learns to ride said horse, shows off her athletic and rock-climbing, fights off alien hoards, wins the lottery saves the planet, resets time...err...I think I fell asleep at some point...all thanks to her amazing wrist implant that can perform any task she asks of it (scanning bodies, remote firing ship beacons, atmospheric testing...)Finally things start to move and then it just goes from 'uh?' to 'duh!'And on to the nasty creatures which would have looked at home in the Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately they seems to fit more in to the 'good idea at the time' category than having any real impact. And in any case if this is simply meant to be a 'future earth' then their presence just doesn't make sense in the time scale between ship launch and crash.The movie was at best 'watchable' and filled a few minutes of my life. Unfortunately it was at times rather painful, and at others rather boring thanks to the poor script and storyline,and not least the ending which screamed 'pilot for a series' as there was no real conclusion merely a sort-of-final battle followed by the arrival of the mother ship. .... If it hadn't been for an evening of boring TV I may not have made it to the end (tbh I may not even have gotten through the opening credits with the ridiculous 'earth is doomed' history)There are better films out there on similar themes.3/10

Kevin Sorbo played Captain Dylan Hunt in the TV series Andromeda. In this film he played the part of Captain Hunter! Furthermore, he came out with one of Dylan's favourite phrases: "It's never easy" OK, they are tongue in cheek aknowledging the overall derivative nature of the movie. I can go along with that.One of my long term bug bears is that many warrior maidens in sci-fi/fantasy films do not have any physical credibility. This film does not make that mistake. The heroine, Kate, is well built with broad shoulders and obvious vital capacity. Ten out of ten for that.There is an early hint when Kate's implanted computer describes the gravity as being "normal". Derivative - "Planet of the Apes". Also, a lot like "The 100." There is a great dearth of new sci-fi/fantasy films. This is jolly good knock about stuff. We need more of it!