Review by Jon Donnis
It is that time of the week whereby I review the latest low budget film, now you know I love my low budget films, so I was looking forward to Project Gemini, if only for that awesome poster! Props to the design team for that.
Project Gemini is a sci-fi survival thriller; a deadly virus has destroyed life on Earth, well at least it is not World War 3! I imagine we will get a lot of films with that storyline in the coming months. Anyway, a deadly virus has infected all the plants on earth, and animals eat plants, and humans eat animals, so you can see the problem. Scientists have decided that the best hope for the human race is to find a new planet to live on.
We have a crew, Steve (Egor Koreshkov), David (Dmitriy Frid) and Leona (Martinez Lisa), we have a rocket ship. Oh, and luckily, we also have a 4-billion-year-old piece of alien technology that we found, have managed to replicate and that will help us terraform a planet that is just 300 lightyears from Earth. For some reason the planet is called Tess, and to get there our crew needs to head through a wormhole of sorts. Of course, with this being a sci fi survival thriller, there is always more going on.
Without spoiling too much, something was hiding in the device, and it is on the ship with them, so they need to finish their mission, before it is too late. Throw in a love story, a pregnant woman, people being killed, and you have a half decent thriller here.
Clearly comparisons will be made to Alien, but this is different enough that those comparisons aren't too deep. And keep in mind this is a film with a low budget, and one thing that frustrates me, is when movie critics judge all films as equals. They are not. You can't compare a Hollywood Blockbuster which cost $200m, with a film that cost a few million. So, we should always judge a film with the limitations the film makers have to deal with.
Despite the budget, the CGI, Visual Effects etc are all very good, and very believable. The film starts off very strong, and also ends very strong with regards to the special effects.
There are a few problems however, a glaring one right near the end, when an answer to THE problem is not really given to someone, as it is physically impossible, so the viewer has to just try to ignore that, unfortunately these kinds of errors always slap me in the face and I start shouting at the screen. There are also some issues with this being an international cast, some dubbing is a bit suspect and some of the lines spoken could have been given with a bit more emotion.
With all that said however, I did enjoy the film, and thought that they did a great job despite the limitations.
The Good
A very watchable sci fi thriller/horror. A nice twist of sorts, that I think should have been a bigger deal, "Damn you all to hell". People over 40 might get the reference.
The Bad
Low budgets, sometimes mean some tedious dialog to fill time.
Overall
It is easy to pick holes in films, and there are some holes in this one, however I quite enjoyed the film, as previously mentioned the special effects were more than what I expected. The story was good, and some of the moments that built tension were well done.
I score Project Gemini a limitation busting 7/10
Out on Digital on 28 March 2022 from Ignition.
