IMDB data: 1 hour and 38 minutes, rated 5.5 by 31,661 pre-pubescent boys,
After many months on Mars, the crew of the Irish Space Commission are packing up for a rendezvous in nineteen hours to return to Earth. The digits on the clock flip. (Clocks don’t tick anymore.)
Wait! Irish in space? Well the production was partly funded by the Irish National Lottery and directed by an expatriate Irishman who will never return to Eire. Plus the logo on the gear is ISC. Nothing gets past the fraternity brothers.
The set-up in Act I is good. There is a large and mixed team that represented the variety of Ireland, though no one mentioned James Joyce. Having been on Mars for six months, they are tired, care-worn, testy, and eager for the return flight. The gear and procedures have verisimilitude. Jordan once again doubles for Mars as it did in ‘The Martian (2015) and ‘Mission to Mars’ (2000), both reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
But…., yes, there is a big ‘But’ coming. The production team evidently thought getting to Mars, landing on Mars, surviving on Mars, doing science on Mars, leaving Mars, making it back to Earth, that all of this is boring. So instead of teasing out the drama implicit in the list above the film swerves to a creature feature. Oh hum. This is Act II.
Turns out in the last hours, one of the crew out spelunking, finds life, a microbe, which infects him and goes on to infect others, turning them into Zombies! Sometimes they remain in their space suits and sometimes not as they wander the Jordanian desert. These Zombies want company, and get it by infecting others. Is this a case of the selfish gene?
Becoming aware of the microbe, the leader the mission gives all kinds of orders that no one obeys. It reminded this writer of trying to get the fraternity brothers ready for Monday. Pointless.
Needless to say this ineffectual leader is one of the first to turn, first dead, then animate again! That is the nature of the zombie, despite the liberties taken by many scriptwriters.
With all the yawning, I lost count of the crew, but say Ten Little Indians. They all succumb but one who makes the rendezvous in Act III. Is he a carrier? That would surely explain the Living Dead Trumpettes.
Did the Irish Film Board recover any money on the Irish Lottery investment? The money was spent in England, in Jordan and in the USA. The fraternity brothers did not hear any Irish accents in the crew above chewing popcorn and slurping sodas.
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