Rated: MA15+
Directed and Written by: Neil Burger
Produced by: Basil Twanyk, Neil Burger, Brendon Boyea
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, Chante Adams, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Viveik Kalra, Archie Madekwe, Quintessa Swindell, Madison Hu and Colin Farell.
“I’m scared.” “Of what?” “I don’t know”.
It’s 2063.
Life on Earth is deteriorating with ongoing drought and famine.
The only hope for humanity is light-years away – two generations away.
Where populating a new world means creating a class of humans that can tolerate living in close quarters, without sunlight or interaction with any other humans except the thirty crew sent into space. And Richard (Colin Farrell).
Richard has educated and raised the crew destined to live on the spaceship, HUMANTUS.
If he goes with them, he can at least try to protect them.
“Protect us from what?”
Voyagers is about that scary idea of what is truly human nature. Without rules, it’s the rule of the jungle (or space?).
So what happens to a group of teenagers when their chemical restraint is lifted?
What happens when impulse takes over, never having learned to control all those basic human desires and drives to survive?
I admit to being in a cynical mood walking into this film, and the intended message of enlightenment because of all those extra layers of grey matter eventually making sense over the kill or be killed instinct had the potential of feeling like an overdone premise.
Having said that, it was interesting to watch the handling of that survival instinct from writer and director, Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist), as the crew dealt with overwhelming hormones AKA getting high on life, and the drive to kill those hitting on your girl or for any slight.
It’s tense with flashes of overriding emotion depicted in montages of screaming and flesh rising in goosebumps to tunnels of blue light and the soundtrack of silence rising with disjointed strings.
It’s a theme that creates an innate fear of seeing what we are capable of, but without overdoing the horror of humans, while keeping up the intensity with a few jumps as this group of young adults figure out what it means to function as a social group.
Timely with the current generation growing up with the threat of climate change and pandemic. Strange times.
And although I feel like I’ve seen the idea of unpacking human nature played out many times before, such as adaptation, Lord of the Flies, well, think any coming-of-age movie, there’s enough suspense to keep, Voyagers interesting.