Prospect Movie Review

Prospect (2018)

Rent Prospect on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl
Directed by: Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl
Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Jay Duplass, Pedro Pascal, Andre Royo, Anwan Glover
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A teenage girl and her father travel to a remote alien moon, aiming to strike it rich, but there are others roving the wilderness and the job quickly devolves into a fight to survive.

Verdict
It's a great budget sci-fi movie with a focused, bleak story and rich world. A larger budget would only muddle what makes this entertaining. The movie hints at a larger world while smartly avoiding getting too detailed. Pedro Pascal plays a fun character just because of how his character speaks. The main character, Cee, is a bit bland but the actor does such a good job you don't notice. It's a budget movie, but if you like sci-fi you'll enjoy this one.
It depends.

Review
It looks like a budget sci-fi movie with a bleak and lonely feel. It doesn't look bad, is just doesn't have the flash of a big budget movie, but I appreciate the depiction space being sparse and lonely.

Jay Duplass plays Damon.

A father and his daughter, Damon and Cee, are planning to mine a moon or planet. The movie gives us just enough to know what's going on while not fulling understanding the space station or larger ship from which the duo depart. How the larger ship doesn't matter and hints at a larger world.

Damon and Cee run int trouble quickly when they encounter outlaws. Everyone is on this planet for precious stones and there seems to be no one to enforce laws. This is the start of a wild ordeal for Cee who has to battle outlaws and mercenaries to stay alive, forced to trust people due to circumstance. It's a bleak movie from the start and it only gets bleaker.

Pedro Pascal plays Ezra, and outlaw that speaks with quite a flourish. Apparently his dialog was toned down to be less Shakespearean. The trait adds intrigue to a character that would otherwise be a rather typical outlaw.

Sophie Thatcher plays Cee.

Sophie Thatcher plays Cee, and while she does a great job, she manages to obscure that her character is kind of bland. There's one neat moment where Cee offhandedly mentions her job before in a kind of butcher shop. I wish the movie had more of that kind of subtlety that adds background to the characters. All of the main characters could use a bit more background or a hint at it.

This is the writers/directors first feature length film, based on one of this short films. They've created a really cool world, and a big budget would just mess it up.