In a misty rainforest on an alien moon, father and daughter, Damon (Jay Duplass) and Cee (Sophie Thatcher), dig for a valuable resource extracted carefully from organisms in the damp soil. Within the organisms lie precious Aurelac gems, rare only in the skill needed to safely extract them. This is Prospect (2018), dir. Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl (and warning – a few tiny spoilers will be found below).
Lauren’s verdict:
Prospect starts quiet and slow, pulling us into the mind of teenager Cee and the space pod she shares with her brusque, distracted father. When their shuttle makes uneasy landing in a toxic rainforest, they strap into their space suits and venture out into the wilderness.
Soon Damon and Cee are accosted by two dangerous strangers, Ezra (Pedro Pascal) and an unnamed goliath with an automatic weapon. Damon strikes a deal with the men – let them live and he’ll take them to the huge payload of gems he’s been contracted to extract. Soon, dire circumstances force Ezra and Cee into an uneasy alliance, knowing that they are the only chance of each other’s survival. The strained trust between Cee and Ezra is compelling – Ezra is eloquent yet brutal, deft in negotiating with the locals and with Cee herself, making him a dangerous man to trust.
In the most confronting scene, Cee uses a scalpel to remove Ezra’s damaged and lifeless arm, in an attempt to save him. The camera doesn’t overpower us with shots of blood and sliced flesh but rests firmly on the faces of Ezra and Cee as she mindfully performs the procedure. Ezra’s face flits from stoney resolve to horror to despair all within the matter of a minute. Watching him slowly realise the weight of what is happening to him is gut-wrenching, but is an acting moment truly worthy of a talent such as Pascal – and should not be missed.
In the end, our prospectors come face-to-face with the ruthless mercenaries guarding the valuable cache of gems, and conflict ensues. This was the one moment in the movie I found a little over-dramatic, which felt a little out of place in such a tempered film.
Prospect is short, yet impactful. It’s quiet in its approach, but resonates with the talent held in each role. It’s beautiful in its tiny details. The ’80s inspired spacesuits looked lived-in and timeless. The gentle special effects drew me into an alien world with very little more than mossy rainforests and the delicate pastels of the moon’s skyline.
Pedro Pascal is electric, a relentless conman and a truly unsettling enemy. Sophie Thatcher’s Cee is pensive and captivating, her naivety balanced only by her fierce determination.
Prospect is something to behold.
4 out of 5 super cool laser guns 💥🔫
Jeremy’s verdict:
Prospect is a fantastic example of sci-fi done differently. Its narrative is rooted in human relationships; those relationships aren’t blown-out by dramatic CGI and excessive action sequences; and the world we’re brought into as viewers is both familiar and new at the same time. Mystery and intrigue are peppered sparingly throughout, making the film refreshingly grounded for a genre that so often bends over backwards to be complicated and ‘clever’.
Set in the future – I guess? – Prospect tells the story of Cee (Sophie Thatcher), a teenage girl, and Damon (Jay Duplass), her father, who travel down from an orbiting space station to a moon in order to harvest valuable Aurelac gems that they can sell for handsome prices. But without wanting to say more than is necessary, they aren’t the only people wandering around this moon, and their prospectin’ for a better life is complicated by Ezra (Pedro Pascal) and his companion (Luke Pitzrick).
Pascal is an absolute joy to watch, and the charming, knife’s-edge delivery of his suave dialogue gives the film a delightful cowboy-western flavour. Thatcher is going to be one to watch out for in the future. Like the others in Prospect, but perhaps even moreso, she presents her character Cee through her body language – worried glances at her father, her hesitation with holding a weapon, her confidence wielding a scalpel in a particularly impressive scene. She communicates well beyond her dialogue and should be applauded for doing it so incredibly well.
The colour grading and effects which transport us to this otherworldly moon feel both straight-forward and effective. There’s rarely any need to over-do these things, and in Prospect, they haven’t. Much like the way Star Wars’ planet Endor feels both familiar (as a giant forest) and otherworldly and magical, so does the moon our adventure takes place on here – and Daniel L.K. Caldwell’s original score complements it perfectly. It has moments of gentle beauty, matched with moments of intensity.
Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, who both wrote and directed Prospect, have done a stunning job on what should be acknowledged as a tight budget – and bar an ending that felt a little more convoluted than it needed to be, in contrast to what is an otherwise incredibly neat and tight narrative – I can’t fault it. Prospect makes a strength out of what other films would see as limitations, in such a way that it never feels like it is limited at all – and a sci-fi story without limits? It rarely gets any better than that.
4.5 out of 5 super cool laser guns 💥🔫
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