Have You Been Watching...? Project Gemini (2023)

Picture this. It’s the dawn of 2023. The morning after the night before. I’m hunting on the apps for a sci-fi movie. I’m in the mood for aliens, spaceships, planets…the works! Every Time I see one that appeals, I’ve seen it before. I want something new. I stumble across Project Gemini… The trailer looked good, so do the effects, so I take the leap…

It turns out Project Gemini is a Russian production (not a problem, I didn’t mind “Attraction” and its sequel “Invasion” from a couple of years ago), and the main cast are also Russian, but speaking English with American accents. Further research indicates this is not quite true, the movie was allegedly filmed in English, then re-dubbed which is why the voices don’t seem to match. How true this is, I have no idea.

The plot of Project Gemini “borrows” heavily from a lot of mainstream popular sci-fi movies. You will find the Alien franchise’s shadow hangs heavy over the production, including the prequel “Prometheus”, but there are a number of great ideas in this movie, it just somehow doesn’t manage to pull them off. Warning: Spoilers aplenty coming up.

In the near future, a virus is wiping out plant life on planet Earth, causing serious problems for the population. Everyone pins their hopes on an expedition to terraform another planet. All of this I relayed in the exposition-laden introduction to the film. The godsend technology that allows this turns out to have been an alien sphere found in a cave that is approximately 4 billion years old. In an instant, it’s believed to have terraformed the Earth and they believe that the sphere can do it again on another world.

A crack team of bland, characterless astronauts are assembled to deliver the payload on a recently discovered world imaginatively called “Tess”. En route to the new world, the sphere somehow activates and releases a lifeform which damages the ship as it is in mid-wormhole (or something). The ship exits the wormhole in an uncharted area of space. Unaware of their stowaway, the crew decide to land on the new planet and continue the mission anyway.

As the movie unfolds we are “treated” to flashbacks, which confuse matters even more, yet still add no characterisation to the crew. In true “alien” style, there are a number of quite literally pointless deaths. There’s also the standard crew member that gets infected by the alien (despite this not happening to anyone else). The alien itself is a clear Xenomorph rip-off. It all turns out in a bizarre twist that is signposted from the opening scenes, that the ship has not travelled in space, but 4 billion years into the past. Yes, the sphere they want to create the new world, is the same sphere that spawned life on earth. What any of this has to do with a Xenomorph killing everyone is anyone’s guess.

The script, the action and the acting is very poor. What saves this movie is the effects and sets. The caves were apparently filmed in Kazakhstan, and it makes a lovely exotic and alien set-piece. What IS outstanding, is the special effects work. It is truly staggering and it seems the effects and the rest of the movie are two different films jammed together. The CGI is wonderful to watch. The downside being that one wishes the effects were married to a much better film in the studio scenes.

I love films that want to “have a go” and create something good that can give the megastudios a run for their money. This could easily have been one of them. Maybe it’s a “lost in translation” script, could a subtitled version work better? We will never know.  This just isn’t the film to do the CGI justice. It’s a tidy 100 mins long, so it’s not a massive chunk of time to waste if you want to give the film a go yourself. 

Trust me, the spoilers above are only part of the revelations of the film, so its not ruined if you’ve read this far.

YEAR: 2022

RATING: 3/10

AVAILABILITY: currently available to rent or buy from the usual online retailers.