3 Short Paragraphs: Prospect

2018, Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl (the short Prospect) -- download

I grabbed this movie a few weeks before it showed up on Netflix, primarily because I like gritty space movies. Not just gritty in tone, but dirty, grimy and the opposite of Star Trek's pristine white. Conversely, I also love that look. Anywayz, I loved the low budget look and feel of this movie that I saw in the trailers, from the contained space vehicle the main characters arrive on, to the pollen overloaded planet they go prospecting on, to the cobbled together space suits that made me feel the whole point of this movie was because a bunch of props guys had a competition as to who could create the coolest space suit, and decided they needed a movie to showcase their work.

Gritty. Wow. We are given nothing of detail to this space opera world but what we see. The ship that dad (Jay Duplass, Transparent) and daughter (Sophie Thatcher, The Exorcist) arrive on is cramped and dirty, like an Apollo craft that they have been living in for the weeks, while their ship, tethered to a larger interplanetary vessel, was carried to their destination planet. They are prospectors of a future gold rush type commodity, some sort of alien by-product, and pretty down on their luck. If dad doesn't do this right, or as he really wants to do, find the motherload, the Queen's Lair.

The planet is pollen laden and absolute poison, not just atmosphere but also with seedy characters all looking for this lair. Almost immediately daughter loses dad to seedy Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones) but the two become tethered to each other, sometimes literally, as they have to find a way off the planet. This is what the movie is really about, how daughter has to dispense with the connections she had with her not-too-fatherly dad and Pedro has to learn how to care for another human being. All this gets wrapped up in a weird and wonderful scifi flick that was perfect for my schtick. The plot is light, but the actors are superb and the practical effects are just perfect.

NOTE: I have to see the original short, to see if the pure aesthetic I detected in this movie is better without the claptrap of a full movie, like with Kin vs Bagman.