Prospect (2018)

Sci-fi often feels like it only comes along in two forms, at least in the movies. You get the small-scale movies that allow people to make the most of one or two great ideas, and you get the big-budget spectacles. It isn’t often that you get something that seems to land between the two, especially something that actually succeeds in what it sets out to do. Prospect is one such movie though, and I was genuinely impressed by the world-building in this. It is all about ideas and people, but everything onscreen also presents a believable and well-realised future without ever feeling cheap.

It all starts with Damon (Jay Duplass) and his daughter, Cee (Sophie Thatcher), landing in a remote alien environment where they will spend time carefully harvesting gems from the dangerous environment around them. It’s not the easiest job, but the great risk offers great reward. Everything changes, however, when Ezra (Pedro Pascal) muscles his way into the picture. It soon becomes clear that Ezra and Cee will have to work together if they want to get things in order for a homeward bound journey.

Written and directed by Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, expanding from their 2014 short film, this is a perfect mix of interesting ideas, good characters, and tech and alien life that is both believable and impressive. That doesn’t mean that the movie itself is perfect, which I will get back to soon enough, but everything is here in just the right proportions to deliver a tasty recipe for those willing to drink it all down.

The small cast is uniformly excellent, but both Pascal and Thatcher stand out, working so well together that it seems to solidify the notion of Pascal being the best choice for any story that requires a reticent father figure to help a youngster on a perilous journey. Both have good reason to mistrust one another, but both also choose to be surprisingly optimistic as they work together towards a common goal. 

Caldwell and Earl do what they need to do, focusing on characters and numerous small details to hint at the texture of a bigger and stranger universe onscreen, but there are a couple of small touches that stop this from being as great as it could be. A bit more time spent setting up the relationship between Damon and Cee could have helped, as well as some more context for the other characters that our leads interact with (e.g. how/why are they dangerous? what are the usual rules of engagement? etc). I enjoy not having everything spelled out for me, but I can’t help thinking that Prospect would have been improved with just a bit more information filling in some of the gaps.

Despite my nit-picking, this is a great bit of sci-fi, and a brilliant feature debut. I hope to see more from Caldwell and Earl soon, and it’s a shame that they haven’t already been attached to any other feature since this, although fingers crossed that we aren’t left waiting too long for whatever they decide their next feature will be. 

8/10

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