The Colony
starring Laurence Fishburne, Bill Paxton, Kevin Zegers, Charlotte Sullivan and Dru Viergever
written by Jeff Renfroe, Svet Rouskov, Patrick Tarr and Pascal Trottier
directed by Jeff Renfroe
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Called “Colony-5” in Japanese, The Colony is a Canadian sci-fi horror with kind of a cheesy story, poor characters, and so-so special effects. It’s another end-of-the-world story of humans surviving on the fringes of a devastated world. In this case, because of global warming, high-tech towers were built around the world to modify the weather by artificially cooling it. But things got out of control and the cooling couldn’t be stopped. So a civilization-destroying ice age was created. As the world froze over all the vegetable food died, then the animals were eaten, then humanity experienced a mass die-off by starvation. But some lucky few found refuge in underground communities called “Colonies.”. The Colony features two such refuges, Colony 7, which sends men to discover why Colony 5 sent a radio SOS. It turns out that Colony 5 was over-run by feral cannibals who then track the retreating Colony 7 rescuers back to their rather plush digs in an underground seed ark. So it was sort of like I Am Legend (2007, Will Smith), except that the cannibals aren’t zombie cannibals. It was also very much like The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid) with a little bit of Aliens (1986, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton) mixed in. Coincidentally, the human scientific community of terraformers on planet LV-426 in the movie Aliens was also called “The Colony.”
There is a terrible fire fight at the end and a few remaining people walk away above ground toward a snowy horizon. I wasn’t satisfied with that.
One thing that really bugged me was how perfect everyone’s teeth look. You’d think that in a time of depopulation, global devastation, starvation, etc. people would suffer more ill health, most visible skin and dental health problems. But in The Colony everyone looks like they could do a toothpaste commercial. They are inappropriately bourgeois teeth.