The Colony

The Colony (2013) ***1/2

The wife and I just watched this fun little action horror flick that 's a decent (if not groundbreaking) entry into the post-apocalyptic genre. Incidentally, I wonder if Rotten Tomatoes has lost its edge. I feel like it used to be rare to see really crap movies get rated highly, or good movies get rated really poorly. But today, I sat through the execrable The Host, rated at a whopping 93% "Fresh" and then the quite good Colony rated a lowly 16%. Both ratings are bizarre to me.

Anyway, the premise here is that it's some vague time into the future after a new ice age has destroyed human civilization. Colonies of people live on in various underground bunkers where they try to avoid getting sick, since the flu can wreak havoc on a group of people living in close quarters. Actually, the movie starts with so much paranoia towards the flu that I was sure this was going to be some sort of viral/contagion zombie movie. But nope. No zombies either. The stand-in for zombies are a group of cannibals who've lost their mind from hunger/despair. They follow our heros back to their bunker and the blood starts flying. They're like slightly more intelligent reavers, from Firefly.

Note: One annoying silly little plot device has the cannibals follow our heros back to their colony. This through driving snow in full on blizzard conditions. Those tracks would have been gone in 10 minutes, but these guys follow them a full 12 hours later.

Still, this pretty good overall. It's a lean 1:35, and you don't ever feel like there's much padding. It's also got a massive score on the Pipe in the Ass meter involving the dude below.

Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton are pretty major characters (and there's some young Wes Bentley look alike as the lead), though they're both pretty much playing to types you've seen them each do many times. Fishburne is the wise mentor, and Paxton is the douchey hothead.