Terminus is a movie about loss and relationships. It takes place in a not too distant future where a huge war/intervention in the East is draining American lives and the economy. This epic is well documented and reflected throughout the movie by numerous background television reports and moving scenes of struggle, and is something brilliantly done. It puts a small Mid-Western town on edge, full of macho guys and recently returned veterans with terrible injuries. It's refreshing to see an approaching apocalypse movie devoting serious attention to external forces. Too often in such movies the background end of days is only attended to in the beginning or sparsely thereafter, which stifles the sense of threat and forces the viewer to watch events unfold as if such gravity was a much lesser part of unfolding drama. Having said that, Terminus is still more about characters with their own problems themselves rather than characters reacting to something bigger than themselves. There are three streams of tension here, each building momentum. This is thus almost a thriller more than a sci-fi film. It seems to have the attention to detail of a big budget production that you'd expect in regard to the actors, all of whom deliver feisty and emotional performances, and yet the sci-fi aspect is conspiratorial, somewhat rushed and far less impressive. I'm not complaining of its scale in the sense of cgi, but I thought it required more expression, each stage could have been given just a tad more impact. I have to admit that it's hard to criticise such an aspect when the entire thrust of the story depends on it. To my mind what's produced is very good, but perhaps could have been better. So often these days I get the feeling that low budget sci-fi movies have not been given enough time to really iron out all the wrinkles and really develop full potential prior to being produced. The sci-fi itself is a very usual juxtaposition, and thus the tension and heightened interest. There are numerous edge of your seat moments here, rolling all the way to an explosive climax, and in the end that's what counts.
Review of Terminus
