Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

writetopcat I find this movie difficult to stay interested in, not because the sci fi plot is unbelievable, after all, that is why we watch sci fi movies. Sci fi flicks usually have a plot that includes an element which requires us to suspend disbelief, something far outside of currently accepted scientific knowledge. This element is usually inserted into the lives of human beings we can easily relate to. That is what makes it interesting and what allows us to engage in the story. We see people acting in ways we can understand to something which is beyond our understanding. But when these peoples' behaviors deviate drastically from what we all know as rational and sane, for me at least, it becomes hard to relate to them. When Victor Caroon alone returns to earth, the scientists are attempting to help him recover and to gain some understanding from him as to what occurred to him and the other two astronauts during the spaceflight. You would expect him to receive round the clock medical attention and monitoring, especially since he seems unable to communicate and does not respond to his own name. But he is often left with only one attendant. During this time he cycles between a semi-conscious fugue state and an agitated, hysterical state, with little ability to respond to anyone. He appears delusional and out of control. Then, for the first time, he gets out of bed and takes a couple of steps before going into one of his unresponsive fugue states, standing motionless staring straight ahead. At this point the doctor decides to leave the room, with the Judith Caroon there to watch Victor. You can guess what is coming next; he is going to overpower her and escape from the medical facility. Bingo. This is completely unbelievable. Victor had never demonstrated rational behavior since his return, and on several occasions he was agitated and out of control. To leave him alone with a single female whom he could easily overpower should he become agitated again, and to do so when he was out of bed and unresponsive to commands for him to return to bed, is ridiculous. We expect to suspend disbelief with respect to the sci fi element of the plot. But when we have to do so in order to explain the behavior of the "normal" people in the movie, the whole thing starts to become a joke. You cannot take anyone in the film seriously, though we are expected to. Too bad. Some b movie sci fi movies become cult comedy films because they lack the pretense of being taken seriously. This one doesn't even do that. The writers attempted to build suspense and tension by making nearly everyone in the film emotionally labile and immature. There is less drama amongst high school girls. Even the news reporter shouts at people he is trying to get information from. This is so overdone that, again, you cannot take anyone seriously. At one point when Dr. Briscoe and Victor's wife, Judith Caroon are theorizing about what might have happened to Victor, she says: "We're creatures of this earth, we live by its terms and conditions, that's all we're able to grasp". Too bad we can't grasp or believe the behavior of the characters in this movie. This is a remake of a 50s sci fi movie which could have been done better.

ettrick The original TV series and movie were ground breaking in Sscience fiction. Why BBC remade this as a 90 minute film , is a mystery. The story line, sets and especially the acting were all atrocious. Good actors appeared to be embarrassed in their attempt to utter their lines from an appalling script. The BBC should be censured for this nonsense and I doubt Nigel Kneale, the original author (mentioned as a consultant) had anything to do with this travesty. I could go on using all the derogatory adjectives in the English language but who really cares, but I have to to make this submission the required length. I sincerely hope they do not attempt a remake Quatermass and the Pit. probably one of the best ever science fiction series.

bob the moo The space rocket project led by Professor Quatermass has now not heard from their crew for several days and the worst is feared. Suddenly though the rocket reappears and they manage to get it back to Earth by remote control, still not knowing the fate of the crew. When they breach the hull they find only one member of the crew in the craft – the others "gone". With the media and other investigators looking on, Quatermass and Dr Briscoe try to work out what happened up there when contact was lost, where the other two crew members are and what has happened to survivor Carroon, who is in a panicked and incoherent state.Two interesting, maybe even good, ideas here. Firstly have a modern go at Quatermass; secondly do a live broadcast of a multi-location drama (they have done it with dramas in the US like ER to reasonable effect). Putting them together into one idea though only works if one doesn't limit or detract from the other, which you gotta feel happens here. Never having really the original Quatermass (I've only ever seen a couple of the movies – which I enjoyed), I'm not protective over the subject and a remake is not something that I specifically have an issue with – if it is good or bad I will watch it on its own merits, not in comparison to something else. The remake itself on paper offers tension, global threats, fear of the unknown and solid sci-fi and it is disappointing then that more is not made of it.Sadly a lot of the biggest failings come down to the delivery of the first idea. The thing about it being live: why? In what way did it help the film other than just being a gimmick to make people watch (which, being BBC4 and now being just a repeat, I doubt does much). I did see a modern musical retelling of the crucifixion done in Manchester (Manchester Passion) and that was done live. While that film was not perfect, at least it was live in a crowd and in public – the fact it was live was a positive (or at least interesting) aspect to it. Here all it seemed to do was meant that it was done cheaply and not in the way that best serves the story. It is not that anyone laughs or falls over, but just that the scenes are done with limited cameras and camera positions, you don't get a lot of edits around a scene, the use of music is limited and of course special effects are not really involved.Technically I'm sure it was impressive to pull it off but this doesn't translate into value for the viewer. Instead what I found was, while the basic story offered me potential, all I ended up thinking about was how much better it would have been if they had made a "proper" film (ie, take your time and redo bits if need be – play with the edit etc) rather than this experiment. It is not that I needed effects but all the way through the fact that they get one shot at everything does prevent it doing more things that would have been useful – such as effects, such as more cuts around scenes, such as multiple angles, such as more locations etc. What the live aspect doesn't explain though is why the film cannot decide when it is set. The characters mostly appear to be in the 1950's, they all talk in the tones and language of 1950's Britain, the space mission is certainly not occurring in the world of 2005 but yet we are in the Tate Modern and are watching the modern BBC news. It is not a massive problem but it just felt like someone wrote this, saw that the clash but just decided to ignore it.The cast are mostly good although you do get the impression mostly that nobody is really pushing themselves or doing anything more exciting than making sure it is right first time. Flemyng is probably not right for the title role but he was OK – if the film had been better generally I think he would have been exposed but as it was he did alright. Tennant, Gatiss, Dunbarr and Varma all do solid work and seem to fit their characters but for me the best performance was from Tiernan. Essentially a babbling wreck throughout the film, if he hadn't convinced then the rest would have fallen down; but fortunately he pulls it off and mostly his weird state is quite effective.I will not recommend this film to anyone because I don't think it was that good. I suppose if you specifically want to see a project (or gimmick) then the live broadcast bit may interest you but I cannot imagine many came for that. No, instead you will be, like I was, attracted by the name and the cast and will be hoping for a good bit of sci-fi. Sadly the live broadcast gimmick takes away a lot while bringing nothing to the table of value to the viewer. A shame because the material's potential is there to see but sadly this is just a basic film that doesn't work and, for another project, I would like to see them do it again with the same cast etc but with the resources of time and money added – just to see what they can do then.

dbborroughs n 2005 the BBC did a live version of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass Experiment. Originally a 6 part three hour TV series about a rocket that returns to earth with only one of its crew still alive, and he's horribly changed. It was the first appearance of Professor Quatermass a flawed genius who is in a way the precursor to Dr Who.(This version co starred David Tennant, the current Dr Who).The production is very good and the cast is excellent with Jason Flemyng making an excellent Quatermass.The show is for the most part very creepy and had it held together until the end it might have actually crossed into scary. The problems with the show come from two places. First the 96 minute program effectively removes half of the originals 180 minutes. There is a great deal of story compression especially in the second half as the plot does not zip along as much as it jumps. I have not seen the original series (only two episodes survive the last I heard) but I've read on the show and seen the film that was made from it so I know there was a bit more towards the end than we see. The other problem with the show is that in adapting the 195-something scripts for modern day broadcast they didn't update enough. the space shot is secret, the technology is often out of date (audio cassettes in a black box?), the media is much too trusting and not enough in your face. It creates a nice sense of its own world, but at the same time its not wholly believable. That said its still a very good retro-sci-fi drama 7 put of 10