Stranded (2013)

Amongst the wodge of films that bypass a theatrical release and go straight to the home retail market there are often overlooked gems that word of mouth and reviews weed out from the dross. Such dross that goes straight to retail tend to be films that trade on the goodwill associated with a known name or dabble within a recognisable formula that is an easy sale, to those less discerning, when it comes to their Saturday night’s viewing. Stranded is one of the latter.

Being a science fiction/horror Stranded is expected to occasionally tread upon similar ground covered by genre benchmarks Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing, however writer Christian Piers Betley’s story doesn’t tread lightly upon the same ground but trample and twist each strand underfoot until there’s no more life left to it. From the monster being ‘birthed’ to the same monster later ‘using the air shafts to move around’ there isn’t an original idea within its plotting.

Christian Slater has dabbled in sci-fi horror before and both Mr Slater, and anyone renting or buying this, should have learnt from the abominations that were Alone In The Dark and Hollow Man II. What happened to the glory days that were Heathers and True Romance?

Here our once promising Christian stars as Colonel Gerard Brauchman, a man obsessed with quarantine regulations and disappearing for chunks of time, leaving all the real work to his very small team of Dr. Lance Krauss (Brendan Fehr), Ava Cameron (Amy Matysio) and Bruce Johns (Michael Therriault) with the aftermath of a meteor storm smashing into their bio-dome facility on the moon.

The crew members excel at doing exceptionally stupid things, all of which lead to Ava becoming pregnant with a very fast growing baby on the way. There’s no alien gate-crashing a dinner gathering here, but a rather straight forward birthing, considering, of an alien that can shape into people.

As with Ridley Scott’s classic Alien, the baby doesn’t remain a baby for long, and soon everyone is wondering who the invader has morphed into. This should be quite obvious as the shape-shifter tends to be a bit grumpier looking than the person whose shape they’ve taken, and also not say very much and generally do quite mean things to the others, so there’s really no reason to have to guess who has been gazumped by the alien.

English filmmaker and Stranded’s director Roger Christian has a pedigree that would scream out that he’d know the formula for a successful movie, after winning an Oscar for his art direction on the original Star Wars and an Oscar nomination for the very film Stranded cribs from the most, Alien! It’s never been quite right for Roger since churning out major turkey Battlefield Earth.

Roger Christian’s film is standard stuff. The meteor storm takes out most of the moon base’s power (hence the constant darkness to hide the film’s limited sets and production design), and also conveniently buggering up their defence and communication systems. With limited power and just seventy-two hours before their supplies run out why not spend that limited time and power investigating a chunk of one of the offending meteors that upset their day? And also let’s just bring that lump into the base, without considering its origin or possible contagion. Serves them right really, as this little lump of rock has a nasty spore upon it that replicates life-forms.

Budgeted at a teeny two million Canadian dollars one could hardly expect state-of-the-art effects, however one would expect the model miniatures of the moon and the meteor-smashed moon base to be of a standard at least similar to most TV sci-fi nowadays. Instead the footage detailing the moon-base being impacted by the meteor storm is just as realistic looking as that moment in TV’s Thunderbirds, when Tracey Island’s swimming pool gives way for one of their craft to lift off, and that’s not a good thing, however the make-up effects are decent enough and provoke the required ‘yuk’ reaction.

One huge moan with Stranded is the writer’s basic lack of what quarantining is. Everyone goes in the room that’s meant to be quarantined, and for the film’s first half-hour there’s just an awful lot of talk about being quarantined when no one in the film clearly gets that quarantine does not mean all standing around the infected without protection on shouting about it. And also leaving the door open.

Stranded is best left to fester on the bottom shelf at your local Blockbusters and be treated with the same contempt that the film’s makers had for you and your well earned cash. Avoid!