Voyagers
Pretty to look at, but this Lord of the Flies-lite space tale is laughably bad.
Richard (Colin Farrell) leads a spaceship full of kids on a multi-generation trip to a new world, in the hopes of saving humanity. Years into their journey, Richard succumbs to an accident, that the now-teens are worried is an alien. They elect Christopher (Tye Sheridan) as the new leader, but it chafes Zac (Fionn Whitehead), who eventually leads a revolt. As the ship descends into debauchery, violence and sex, Christopher and the ship’s young doctor Sela (Lily Rose Depp) have to find a way to save the mission.
Directed by Neil Burger, Voyagers works better as a vessel for creating showreels for the young and upcoming acting talent in Hollywood than on any plot level. The film repurposes much of the plot of Lord of the Flies, and crafts a perfectly forgettable sci-fi adaptation that will only stick with you after when you remember the howls of laughter in cinema at some of the performances.
Let’s start with the story. We’re confronted with a group of young science experiments, who are all being drugged to be a little more docile. When two stop taking the drug, one of them becomes a murderer and incites and insurrection aboard the ship, using a fake alien and hamfisted immigrant allegory to bring more and more of the young crew around to his side. The story lurches awkwardly between plot devices, neatly avoiding any interesting take on this material in the process. The inclusion of a potential alien presence hints at a much more exciting movie, while also muddling this human nature struggle into obscurity.
Then there’s the script, which feels entirely cliche driven. The film juggles tropes constantly, never successfully making the film different in any way significant enough to matter. It’s a slog to get through, just because you’ve seen this over and over again in different iterations.
The acting in particular is horrendous. These are the brightest young stars, but the material is so terrible they are unable to wrap any reality around it. Lily Rose Depp in particular got laughs in the screening we were in for her delivery of certain romantic lines, and those laughs were 100% justified. It’s a cast struggling to make any of this believable, and delivering performances that are consistently unwatchable.
