A group of strangers awaken aboard an alien spacecraft. Divided they will die. Together, they can find a way home.
There are smart science fiction movies; “Blade Runner,” “Interstellar,” “Moon,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Then there is sci-fi/horror, “Alien,” “The Thing,” and “Starship Troopers,” to name but a few. What “Project Ithaca” dares to do is merge these two genres together to create a mind-bending, thought-provoking space opera, instead, what we get is 85 minutes of convoluted, entangled storylines that go nowhere and fast.
A group of people wake up restrained in an alien spaceship orbiting earth’s atmosphere. As the story progresses, we are informed that each individual comes from a different place in time, the 1960s, 1970s, 2000s and so on. Every so often a snake-like creature appears and envelops one person’s head as it feeds off human fear. One of the captives, John (James Gallanders), was working with the American government in the 1960s and discovered an alien spacecraft that had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico a few years earlier. All of the local citizens were examined for abnormalities with one pregnant woman’s unborn child exhibiting readings off the charts. Unbeknownst to the mother, after she gave birth, they switched her baby with an infant whose mother died giving birth and kept her child to experiment on.
Nicknamed Sera (Deragh Campbell), John, the head of the program, bonded with her after his own wife and daughter were killed in a car crash. Their mission was to try and collectively integrate Sera’s consciousness with the alien spaceship they discovered in Roswell but when they finally did, all hell broke loose and both John and Sera woke up in the ship orbiting earth.
After explaining this to the others, the group must work together to try and figure out a way to escape. After the snake creature kills one of them, they realize that fear is their abductors’ motivating factor and is giving them the power they need. As their time draws nearer, John asks Sera to try and mentally open the door she said she saw in a vision before they disappeared to the ship. Unable to do so, panic sets in and with everyone trying their best to remain calm, when the creature rears its head again, Sera uses every ounce of her mind, body, and soul to open the door she believes holds the answer to their imprisonment, and the key to their escape.
“Project Ithaca” infuses the story with an overabundance of deep, philosophical thinking, and by the film’s end, it raises more questions than answers. It leads us down one road, hints at a possible conclusion, then backs up and takes us down another road and repetition sets in as it tries desperately to dig itself out of the hole it created. It is too smart for its own good and when the movie ends, it does so with a sense of arrogant accomplishment, almost as if it asked the most important question in the history of mankind and with its final shot, answered it for us. Hint: It doesn’t.
Available on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital), DVD, and Digital August 6th
