Sometimes you blind watch an unknown indie film with the hope you’ll stumble upon a classic. This is one of those times… but it’s hardly a classic. Some would argue it’s hardly a movie. I wouldn’t go that far… but, then again, I probably should have watched the trailer.

Colonials is about a Mars colonist who crash lands on Earth and winds up in some kind of war between those who were left behind and “The Exiles”. Or at least that seems to be the plot once they take half the film to get around to an info dump.

This film gave me a moment of introspection. Just because a movie’s CGI looks like early 90’s CD-ROM cut-scenes, does that automatically make it a 1/2 star film? At first… absolutely. I was ready to savage. This flick repeatedly made me mutter “Come on, movie!” and “Oh GAWD!” with each crappy new effects shot. It’s bad. But I paused and reconsidered… this is now the world in which I live… either just go with the amateur hour effects and try to appreciate the story or surrender to the snark.

I decided to try to let the bad CGI (and the terrible sound mixing and the dubious acting) wash over me. And once I shed 25% of my understanding of professional filmmaking, the rest of me enjoyed myself on a certain B (or C or D) movie level… it’s still a pretty bad film, but there is genuinely something amusing and almost admirable about the effort.

The film’s dedication to pulp sci-fi roots is kind of fun. It’s also super cringe with hammy dialog and hammier acting… some of which was surely intentional. And between all that and the gonzo bad effects, there’s something charming about the effort. I mean, to paraphrase David Chen, it’s kind of amazing they made a movie at all.

Score: 61