3 Short Paragraphs: The Colony (Tides)

2021, Tim Fehlbaum (Hell) -- download

Earth has been destroyed; the waters have risen, radiation and pollution abounds and she cannot sustain us. The elite escape to Kepler 209. How they reach a distant star and establish a colony is not important but generations later the colony is barren in its own right -- unable to bear any more children. They must return to mother Earth and see if she is once again more habitable. The first expedition was lost decades ago, and now the second expedition crashes into the sea, a sea that soon dissipates leaving them on a silty shoal. But as the tide returns the lone surviving colonist is attacked by locals; obviously life has survived on Earth, but in what form? 

With a certain sense of style and forthright execution Fehlbaum delivers something above middling, something definitely worth watching.  They should have stuck with the name Tides because the mood of the choice, basically a worldbuilding element, sets the tone for the movie. Everything is mud and water, a short clock that influences all subsequent actions. The water rises, and then recedes. Actions are paused, and then resumed. 

This is what Liman should have wanted from his less than middling movie Chaos Walking. While the stories are comparable in many rights, with familiar retread topics, Tides makes takes paths that leave many scenes in memory. Without relying on any CGI laden gimmicks, usually just scenes built in muddy water, or abandoned freighter ships, or on the muddy shoals, the world has weight and character. And so do the actual characters. Our lone colonist has to recognize what she has come from, the colony and the legacy, and make a decision to encourage the return of her nice clean white forbears, or recognize the value of the descendants of those they left behind.