With this week’s news of Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos becoming the first American public citizens to enter orbit, the reality of humans colonizing space is becoming more and more a reality. But what exactly will that future look like? What obstacles will the first people who live on Mars endure, and what flaws will we bring with them? One such vision comes in the new sci-fi film from IFC Midnight, Settlers (in theaters today), which feels surprisingly less fictitious and more inevitably real of what may be to come.
Settlers tells the story of mankind’s earliest people on the Martian frontier. Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), and Remmy (Brooklynn Prince) are a tight-knit family of three living on a compound in Mars. It’s clear that they love each other, showing concern for each other’s safety at every moment, and soon enough it’s clear why: when masked intruders arrive brandishing weapons and disrupting the family unit, their dynamic is destroyed. The trespasser’s message becomes clear soon enough: who is the real intruder amongst them? And who is actually trespassing on whose land?
For a sci-fi film taking place on Mars, writer and director Wyatt Rockefeller gives Settlers a realistic setting (not always easy to do on a tight budget). Its vast, red-skied desert landscape makes for a grounded and believable depiction of Mars. To this end, Settlers smartly focuses its story on the human elements at the heart of the story (even breaking the film into chapters focusing on each of the main characters). The central struggle here is both of settlers and indigenous people trying to co-exist with each other, along with trying to survive while bringing their fatal human flaws (and corruptions) with them. Settlers ends up entering much darker terrain than I had anticipated, which makes the film even more substantial and worthy of a watch. There’s a funny BB-8-like robot named Steve that’s around for some light-hearted fun, but Settlers is at its best when it stays intimate with its characters.
The film’s biggest names, Sofia Boutella (Climax) and Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), establish the heart of the film early on as mother and daughter, giving a strong central core to the film. Boutella’s protective resolve as young Remmy’s mother is strong, and Prince is tasked with delivering a strong emotionally intricate performance beyond her years, which she does. When Settlers advances forward in time, it’s Ismael Cruz Córdova as Jerry, a native intruder, who lives long enough to see an older Remmy (Nell Tiger Free) and attempt to live alongside her. Nell Tiger Free continues the film’s suspenseful and adventurous tone while ending up being the one to take the story to a new chapter.
Settlers works as more than just another sci-fi film and successfully poses questions that we should currently consider as a society, across all of humanity. It’s a worthy depiction of humanity’s inevitable future, and warns of the human struggles that will continue to endure if we don’t learn from our intrinsic corruptions. It certainly makes me think that Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos should consider and share their thoughts on the ethical questions surrounding colonization before we settle onto these new frontiers.
Distributed by IFC Films, now playing in theaters.
