Project Ithaca (2019)

Streaming services have pretty much killed off any market for casual consumer level DVD's / Blurays. Sure, niche and indie markets for stuff like Arrow Distribution and 88Films still exist and from what I can gather must do well for HMV, but otherwise the market has died. And to be honest that is a shame because there was quite a simple joy in browsing through DVD's on shelves, looking at movies, reading the blurb like a much younger version of me used to do with videos back when Blockbuster was a thing. It just ain't quite the same with streaming. And back before streaming killed off the DVD section in my local Tesco, I spotted a movie that sounded... dodgy enough to maybe be a contender for this blog: Project Ithaca. A 2019 movie about six strangers waking up to discover they have been abducted by an alien spaceship. I low-key like space sci-fi movies anyway? So even if this is pretty horrendous, a small part of me is potentially going to enjoy it anyway? But with a slightly concerning score of 4/10 on IMDB I am... not entirely sure what I'm about to subject myself to.

After sitting through 3 completely silent company logo vignettes and being mildly concerned that the sound on my laptop had fully died... We start with a quick opening sequence set in 1959 with what appears to be some kind of military authority trying to communicate with a futuristic technology... fast forward some years and John Brighton (James Gallanders), Zack Chase (Alex Woods) and Sera (Deragh Campbell) wake up to find themselves covered in crap and bound by sentient tentacles which all looks a bit like the start of an unsettling porno movie... It appears John and Sera may know each other, owing back to the experiment back in 1959, but Sera clearly in some kind of disconnected mental state is unresponsive but panicky and twitchy. Back in 1969 (?) and back at the military compound at the beginning, General Allistair Borland (John Novak) learns that Agent Brighton (presumably John) has gone missing and he has a conversation and at this stage the movie explains nothing, just baffles you with detail, but it appears John and Sera have been transported, potentially through time, to somewhere... or something... Back inside the tentacles room, after some poor lady has a panic attack and passes out, another captive wakes up: Perry (Daniel Fathers) which seems to get both John and Zack in a talkative mood and we learn that John works for the Ministry of Defence and that they have been tasked with looking into a series of regular alien abductions, and that our new gang of friends appear to be their latest abductees. Then unconscious lady is suddenly very much awake again and we learn her name is Rhonda (Konima Parkinson-Jones). As Perry manages to talk her round to being calm again, the quartet sans Sera begin to try and make sense of the situation they are in, before a fifth person joins the party; Alex (Caroline Raynaud) who starts crying out in French, but luckily Rhonda just so happens to be fluent in a second language and manages to talk her round. Alex immediately recognizes Zack as a rock star who disappeared / died over 15 years ago and it transpires they are all from different times; Alex 2018, Perry 2050, Zack 2001, Rhonda 1977 and John 1969. But before they can explore this topic any further, some kind of tentacle creature drops from the ceiling and proceeds to suffocate and strangulate Rhonda until she dies as she hallucinates that she is in her Grandma's living room, her safe place. As the others lose their shit, John begins to put 2 and 2 together and opines that fear is what the aliens are harvesting from them, and that when they are scared it generates energy. John explains to the others that they salvaged a UFO wreckage from Roswell New Mexico (sigh) and that when examining the wreckage they believed the ship was both piloted and powered by the aliens thoughts. And that after studying residents in the local area they discovered an unborn child with a sporial contamination that led it to develop incredible mental techniques. That child grew up to be Sera, and with Sera they were able to re-activate the alien craft but in doing so, almost killed her. As a result he and Sera had grown close but General Borland had him removed from the project and it had been 10 years since he last saw her... until now. That bit of exposition out of the way, the alien/s return again and this time choose to... well interface... with all of the captives this time, with John flashing back to losing his wife, Perry flashing back to being visited in jail by his daughter and Alex flashing back to seeing her - I think - step father abuse her OD'ed mother and essentially abduct her. In John's vision though, he is suddenly transferred to Rhonda's safe place where he is joined by Sera. Sera explains that the ship is protecting a biomechanical intelligence that feeds on emotions and that it's trying to generate enough energy to open a portal that would allow the aliens to travel through and that the ship exists in multiple points in time as it's looking for her. But in that moment the alien seems to realise what is happening and severs it's connection with Sera, but begins to talk to John and explains that they - the aliens - want to help him to find the peace he is searching for after losing his wife and daughter. Back inside the craft, Alex regains consciousness and talks to a now fully conscious Sera who explains that she may have been sent to stop the aliens and save everybody but doesn't know if she can, and as the others regain consciousness, John explains that the aliens knew all along of humanity's plan to send Sera into the craft to try and destroy it. As the aliens begin to torture and kill Perry, Sera is transported into Rhonda's safe space again where the aliens explain that they have been searching for her and that they have 1000's of humans inside, but only Sera can make the decision to save the others and only she knows how, before she awakes again inside the ship and using her power, gives the aliens what they want: the wormhole open before she rewinds time so that the others are alive before teleporting them off the vessel leaving them imparted with the knowledge they need to stop the coming alien invasion.

Phew! This was... a bit mentally exhausting. I wasn't ready for this level of concentration and digestion. So there was a lot of exposition going on throughout this, like A L O T. And it got very detail heavy, and with it very confusing to follow, with it's fair handful of slightly open ended ambiguous things happening that weren't really explained and elaborated on which really ruined what I think could have been a really interesting and really exciting basis for a film series to develop from. It certainly lays all the groundwork in that respect but unfortunately it was maybe a bit too high level and bit to complex with it's pseudo-science stuff that I think it would have lost most of it's audience, me err included in parts. My plot summary is kind of a basic understanding of what I think was going on...

And it's a bit of a shame because this wasn't an unenjoyable movie. It was decent. But I did get the feeling that they tried really hard to be un-necessarily over complex with it. Like they were trying to out science The Matrix or something! And then, as a result, it was really difficult sometimes to just understand what the fuck was going on. Even when the characters helped fill in some of the gaps with exposition they used pseudo-science terms that you needed to piece together yourself mentally to try and wrangle an understanding of what was happening in the movie. And that's fine I guess, it has an audience and hey, maybe I'm just a bit slow. But for me, it damages the movie a bit and I think if they had just dialled it back a few notches it would have been a far more enjoyable and accessible experience.

Plot and production-wise though, at it's core it's very basic. 90% of the film taking place within the alien craft abduction chamber, with other parts being flashbacks. So that being said, even with the fancy and modern special effects and set design, it couldn't have been a mega expensive movie to shoot. Although in terms of budget, it is far and away better than other "low budget" movies that I've watched. The set design inside the alien craft was unsettling and uncomfortable. And it was certainly convincing enough. Similarly although few and far between, the other special effects; the alien craft, and other parts shown within the ship were professional enough to be on par with, say, higher budget movies.

Acting wise as well, things here were pretty fine. Everyone did a pretty decent job with their roles. I particularly gravitated towards Daniel Fathers as Perry, maybe because he was British, but I dunno, I just liked him. But to be honest I thought the most standout here was Caroline Raynaud as Alex who seemed to have just a little bit more emotional scope than all the others but did a really good job in her role and should absolutely go on to do other things. She didn't really get to play a central role in this, it was mostly dominated by John Brighton and Sera's characters, but she felt like the strongest supporting role and particularly stood out against the others as having just that little bit more. Not that any of the acting was bad though, everybody in this, I felt, did a good job.

I touched on it earlier, but the production here was also pretty decent. The cinematography was pretty top notch, making use of just the right angles to sort-of hide the basic set design but enough that you still felt immersed in the movie - good job - and similarly when they needed to they could splice in some creative shots or creative framing to enhance a scene. If I have one complaint is that there was lots of cutting to the same repetitive scene of the alien brain thing harvesting their emotions, like after the 3rd of 4th time, I don't think you needed to keep hammering that part home, but I guess it helped to just mildly pad things out a bit.

So the above accounted for, where I felt the movie really let itself down and where it really takes a blow to the Achilles heel is that it was just so fucking difficult to understand what was going on. The story moves along very quickly at first, pretending it's audience just know what is going on which is a familiar trope as you know the details will be filled in later, and filled in they are yes, but there is an incredible amount of exposition crammed in and then in the last quarter of the movie there was just a lot of things going on with a lot of round-the-houses dialogue that doesn't really help to flesh out just exactly what it is you're watching develop. And alot of it you sort of have to just try and figure out yourself. And if you don't go into this with the intention to try and make sense of it you are just going to come away thinking, "well what the fuck was that?" and I could see that being the reaction from a lot of people.

And that is really a bit of a shame, because at it's heart there is a interesting premise and an interesting foundation laid out for what could go on to be a bit of a movie series. Sure it's only a potential and the next obvious event would be the alien invasion of Earth which, y'know, has been done a thousand times before... but there is a foundation none the less that is slightly creative, slightly different from what has come before and I think, at least worth a chance? But sadly the movie really fucks all of that up with just being far too exposition heavy, far too ambiguous and far too confusing to really lay a solid foundation. And if it had just calmed down a bit, turned it down a notch and taken things a bit steadier there was a really interesting, really exciting principle here ripe for exploration. 3 out of 5.