The Colony

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The Colony
Starring Kevin Zegers, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Paxton, Charlotte Sullivan
Directed by Jeff Renfroe
Synopsis:
In 2045, humanity built weather machines to control the climate due to global warming, but the machines break down and the world is tossed into another ice age, where the survivors have to bunker down underground.  Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) is the leader of Colony 7, and when he hears a distress call from Colony 5, he takes Sam (Kevin Zegers) and another community member to find out what happened.  He leaves Kai (Charlotte Sullivan) in charge, rather than his friend Mason (Bill Paxton), who is seen more as a dictator than a contributing community member.

Upon arriving at Colony 5, the group learns of a location where they've gotten the weather machine to work again, but they also run into a gang of cannibals who killed the entire Colony, and chases them back home.

Review:
I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic movies, and I heard some good things about "The Colony" so I decided to check it out.  While it wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination, it was enjoyable enough for what it was.

There are a few issues I had wtih the film:
-the story is entirely cliche.  It's very predictible from start to finish, and no real surprises are in store.
-lack of character development.  You don't really know any of the actors, and you don't really care about their outcome.
-the cliched character.  Paxton's character is obviously the same character in every post-apocalyptic movie: the one who feels he knows what's best, takes over everything and becomes the bad guy.  Only in this film he goes from bad to good to bad to good to bad, and it's just confusing and jumbled.
-no conclusive ending.  This isn't a soap opera or a television series, and the ending is very open-ended, and it feels like you've seen the middle film of a supposed trilogy, but there was never a first or third film.

Summary:
A typical, cliched post-apocalyptic movie you'll forget a day after you've seen it, which is unfortunate.

My Rating: C+

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