A U.S. moonbase is halfway through its one year mission when it is bombarded by a meteor storm.  The four person crew lead by Colonel Gerard Brauchman (Christian Slater) are cut off from earth and have to handle a variety of problems including keeping enough power on and carbon monoxide levels down until a rescue shuttle can arrive.  Their other problems include a meteor rock containing alien spores that replicates very fast (but it looks like someone’s thrown up food) and one of the crew being infected by the spore.   The Doctor believes that everyone could start to suffer side effects from carbon monoxide poisoning, but a shape shifting alien life form is soon stalking them.

 

STRANDED starts as a sci-fi horror thriller with some promise before degenerating into a Z grade rip off of ALIEN where people make some really bad choices and wondering why they don’t hide the alcohol from the base engineer sooner.  Then you have so many story elements I have seen in so many other movies executed better than in STRANDED.  The model effects and production design are great for the small budget they had to make this movie, I believe director Roger Christian and co-screenwriter Christian Piers Betley should have written a better script to go along with the moody look (and the old trick of keeping everything under low light conditions).   I am glad that Christian Slater and Brendan Fehr are getting work (and I wish Brendan would chose better scripts).  I do wish they revealed whether the creature or existed later in the movie instead of leading to head scratching moments as you wonder when the crew will finally realize a creature is wandering the base.   Then the movie ends on a cliffhanger for a sequel where they should have rewrote it to explore where the plot goes from there.   Unfortunately, STRANDED ends up being an underwhelming rental that should have a better script instead of treading ground that many other sci-fi horror films have explored before to better effect (and it doesn’t help they kill off my favorite character).

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

THE MAKING OF STRANDED features interviews with the cast, director, and the co-screenwriter as you find out the script originally had the story take place on a space station, how the script was written between the director and the other writer, the cats beaming about how easy it was to work with Roger Christian, production design, and the model work (which was much cheaper to do than CGI).

 

LIFE ON THE MOON: THE FX OF STRANDED looks at the special effects make-up and the miniature work.

 

Previews for EVIDENCE, THE COLONY, and THE TALL MAN play before the main menu.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  You might be better watching ALIEN or PROMETHEUS again than checking out STRANDED which falls into the trap of being a Z grade ALIEN rip off.  If you must check it out, rent it on a day when you have exhausted all other rental choices.

 

This DVD review is (c)8-31-2013 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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