Voyagers

The odd and oddly satisfying career of writer/director Neil Burger continues with Voyagers, a slick sci-fi thriller that makes engaging use of prominent themes from his prolific past decade.

Essentially Not Another Planet Colonization Movie, the film hits its stride early as loner scientist Richard (Colin Farrell) forms an unexpectedly strong bond with the group of lab-created children who’ll be octogenarians by the time their space mission reaches Earth 2.0.

Blessed with shiny, sterile sets by go-to genre production designer Scott Chambliss (Star Trek; Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2), through which the camera of DP Enrique Chediak (127 Hours; Deepwater Horizon) flies like an artistically minded ghost, Voyagers also provides a stunning visual experience, leaving viewers to merely wait for the story’s conflict to kick in.

Though believable, the pivotal, somewhat convenient turning point 10 years later of friends Christopher (Tye Sheridan, X-Men: Dark Phoenix) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead, Dunkirk) discovering via computer hack that the crew’s daily mandated vitamin has an ingredient that encourages compliance and decreases pleasure raises questions about how well-planned and monitored this all-or-nothing star trek truly is.

Upon sharing this epiphany with their fellow passengers, nearly all of them stop taking the supplement, and the sudden introduction of liberated adolescent urges into the formerly controlled environment raises a host of possibilities for things going awry. 

The crisis, however, is bound to come from Richard, Christopher, Zac, or chief medical officer Sela (Lily-Rose Depp, Crisis), seeing as Burger fails to develop the rest of the team, yet the handful of anonymous supporting characters who play key roles nevertheless sharply convey the emotions necessary for each tense scene to work.

As the intergalactic civil war heats up, Burger intelligently blends the primal tribal instincts of The Lord of the Flies with The Crucible’s commentary on people’s susceptibility to superstition in the face of fear, mixing in his own interests in superhuman abilities (Limitless; Divergent).

Elevating these sci-fi elements are heartfelt humanist leanings that may or may not be enhanced by the filmmaker’s successful exploration of such themes in The Upside. Similar to that unexpected winner, an expertly cast core ensemble likewise propels Voyagers and ramps up viewer investment in their plight, resulting in a wholly satisfying conclusion.

Grade: B. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills and Carolina Cinemark

(Photo: Vlad Cioplea/Lionsgate)