Kate Mitra (Danielle Chuchran) is one of the crew of Columbus 7.   She goes with a small team lead by Captain Hunter (Kevin Sorbo) to explore an Earthlike world.  While traveling through the wormhole, the ship is damaged and crashes on this new world.   Soon Kate and the survivors are attacked by flesh eating creatures and the human inhabitants.   Kate escapes the creatures after being captured and she goes searching for Captain Hunter while being followed by Rogan (Rocky Myers) who doesn’t agree with the actions of his tribe and he wants to rescue his daughter from the creatures.   Kate must survive this world and save Captain Hunter while finding out what happened to the other survivors.

 

SURVIVOR is a low budget sci-fi film funded by Kickstarter and filmed in Utah.  The action scenes really are well choreographed with a good score from James Schafer.   John Lyde manages to write and direct an interesting and yet imperfect post-apocalyptic tale of survival.   The special effects from Bluefire Studios are a mixed bag.   The only special effects that are perfect are the holo displays on the spaceships, the wrist holo displays, and the final spaceship shot.   The other effects work looks too much cheap effects work that needed better blending in with the live action photography with the cgi ship sets and the cgi fire being prime examples.   However, SURVIVOR thankfully doesn’t rely too much on the effects work and the photography of the Utah locations and the stunt work from the CBR Stunt Team are what help the movie.   Danielle Chuchran and Kevin Sorbo are the best actors here while Rocky Myers manages to hold his own with those two barely while the rest of the cast is a mixed result.  The extras are great in the action scenes while the acting from the rest of the cast is so-so.    John Lyde is someone I would watch another film from as long as he has a great team and cast behind him.   That brings me to the cinematography of Airk Thaughbaer which mostly works except for some of the action shots being a little too close, but some of the action could have been edited down by Thaughbaer to make one of the fight scenes between the natives and Kate flow better.  

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The only extras are a trailer for SURVIVOR and previews for other releases from Xlrator Media.   It would be interesting to have a making-of featurette, the original kickstarter video, and maybe even an audio commentary.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  SURVIVOR is an imperfect low budget sci-fi movie that does deserve an audience and I hope you do rent it since I did find myself watching parts of it more than once (I would like to see SyFy pick this one up and air it).  I hope his next movie has a bigger budget and more consistent special effects if he does another sci-fi movie.

 

This review is ©2-25-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

Like Enterline Media on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/enterlinemediaweb and follow on tumblr at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com