Saturday, March 4, 2023

5th Passenger, Monster vs. Spaceship Survivors

It is a shame today's film will not get a lot of love.  An "Alien" ripoff?  Perhaps.  Still, I see a lot of Roger Corman in this one instead of James Cameron.  You'll see a lot of folks dissing this one, but the creature f/x are good, the gore is okay, the space and spaceship f/x are terrific...and the creepiness factor will be off the charts.  In a moment I will describe some of the plot...some of it.  Be warned...this is one of those films that there is a lot more going on than just what we can recap in a review.  Today's movie, 2017's "5th Passenger," directed by Scotty Baker.

Eva (Morgan Lariah) is a navigator on a humongous spaceship.  Her captain, Franklin (Tim Russ), is a grouch.  When she leaves the bridge a massive asteroid storm hits and shreds the ship.  Anyone who can flees to escape pods.  Eva makes it to the pod, and also arriving at the same pod is Franklin, a rude guy named Li (David Lim), a chicken farmer, don't ask, Thompson (Manu Intiraymi), and a doctor named Myers (Armin Shimerman).  Oh yes...big secret...Eva is pregnant by the chicken farmer.  Uh oh...this particular escape pod is blown off course when the mothership explodes...now they are lost in space with only a couple of weeks of oxygen.  Then the horror begins.

Desperately needing oxygen, the crew finds a derelict escape pod.  Eva and Thompson board it hoping to scavenge food and air.  Something aboard the derelict murdered the crew and whatever it was, sneaks aboard the pod when Eva and Thompson return.  Now the creature begins murdering.  The thing is a toothy fiend that crawls in air vents and pops up in the strangest places.  What is it?  Well, Franklin is hiding something.  Apparently, the spaceship destroyed by asteroids was a biological weapons ship and animal DNA was being spliced with alien DNA.  But wait!  Is that what is really going on here?  As horrific as all this sounds...the film will get even more horrific...you'll see. No spoilers here, but Roger Corman would be proud.

Will any of the five castaways survive the creature and be rescued from deep space?  What is a chicken farmer doing on board a biological weapons space cruiser?  Is Eva's pregnancy going to play a part in the horrific conclusion of this space epic?  This one is gritty and will present some frightening twists.  For a very underrated and underappreciated scifi/horror film, see "5th Passenger."    

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