Title – Captive State (2019) 

Director – Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) 

Cast – John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Vera Farmiga, James Ransone, Machine Gun Kelly

Plot – Years after aliens have taken control of our planet and rule the worlds leaders/armed forces, a group of Chicago based residents choose to fight back and light and match that could lead to all out warfare between the species. 

“This is no longer our planet”

Review by Eddie on 25/01/2020

Hey guys, do you remember the 2019 sci-fi/thriller Captive State from Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt? 

It’s ok if you don’t, actually it would be surprising if you did, so forgotten and unloved was Wyatt’s mid-budget offering that the film has never even made its way to Australian shores either via way of a cinematic release or VOD release.

At once stage looking like one of those original concept genre mash-ups that if done well could be seen as both an analogy of our times or just a straight up sci-fi yarn, Captive State arrived with little to no fanfare on its way to piddling box office results and poor critical and audience feedback and upon final viewing of this finished product, its safe to say the film got exactly what it deserved. 

Almost thrill free and offering audiences nothing to grasp a hold of in a character sense or setting sense, this Chicago based affair that imagines a world where alien lifeforms have overtaken our hierarchy and humans must obey their rulings, alongside a Big Brother like landscape where humans every move and moment is watched and observed, State fails to utilise, any of its ample ideas or capable cast members to great effort as Wyatt once more delivers disappointing results in the directors chair. 

After great moments with his breakthrough prison movie The Escapist and then with Hollywood heavyweight The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Wyatt has been meandering in the Hollywood system with TV show work and forgettable efforts like The Gambler with hopes originally that this effort would be the type of film to bring him back into the light. 

Unfortunately State is a charisma free affair, devoid of any moments of memorable spectacle, unable to provide us with any interesting characters and plodding along at such a miserable pace that you wonder if the genre of thriller is completely wrong for this escapade that will have sci-fi nuts hungry for other similar products that do the job much better and thriller fans bored witless by a film that seemed like the result of some good ideas hastily put together into a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. 

Final Say – 

A hugely disappointing and lame affair, Captive State has the shell of a good film but that’s it; the rest of the finished product we are left with is an offering that fails to give us a reason too care. 

1 sim card out of 5