Five science fiction movies to stream now
By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
This month’s options include an adaptation of an early Stephen King novel, jungle dinosaur battles and atmospheric thrillers.
‘The Long Walk’
This adaptation of an early Stephen King novel (which was published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) is as grim as required by the source material. Set in a totalitarian, alternate-reality United States, the story often recalls that of the classic drama “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) about a dance marathon. Every year in the world of “The Long Walk,” 50 teenage boys compete in the titular endurance event — a brutal contest in which falling below 3 mph means literal elimination. Slack off, and you’re shot; walk until you’re the last one standing.
It’s important here to recalibrate your expectations: “The Long Walk” is not an action movie, but an intimate drama centered on some of those boys and particularly on the friendship between Pete (David Jonsson) and Ray (Cooper Hoffman). The oppressive sense of hopelessness created by director Francis Lawrence is more convincing than anything he’s ever whipped up on one of his “Hunger Games” movies. Death here is simultaneously senseless and meaningful, making each loss tragic, especially since we grow to know and care for the boys. That girls don’t walk feels part of the point, too: Maybe King meant the long walk, and their absence from it, as a metaphor for the draft, but now you can read this single-sex ordeal and its despair as masculinist ideology crashing into a wall of its own making. (Stream it on HBO Max.)
‘Primitive War’
Set in Vietnam in 1968, this proud slice of B-grade entertainment is for dinosaur-movie fans who thought “The End of Oak Street” was too quirky. “Primitive War” defiantly stays within the lines of genre conventions: A mysterious machine creates havoc, overhead shots of gigantic beasts abound, and the gore is served in generous portions. The visual effects are above average, too. But what makes Luke Sparke’s film really stand out is its dialogue. My favorite line drops after Sgt. Baker (Ryan Kwanten) and his elite unit are dispatched to an isolated valley and their mission instantly goes horribly wrong. “We’ve been attacked by all kinds of prehistoric beasts,” Baker radios his superior (Jeremy Piven), “all of them hungry, pissed off and chomping at the bit for their little piece of the American pie.” Dinosaurs are not the only ones doing serious munching here: Some of the actors must still be picking bits of scenery from between their teeth, with a special mention to Tricia Helfer as a stranded Soviet paleontologist. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘Signal One’
Some of the most thought-provoking science-fiction films in recent decades have been about communication, whether it’s among humans or with alien life forms. When extraterrestrials are involved, the films tend to involve various forms of language but also whether interacting with the unknown is a good idea in the first place. Both are at the core of Jonathan Sobol’s tight film, which is set in a private lab on a Caribbean island funded by a billionaire (Dennis Quaid). There, misanthropic genius Perry (David Thewlis) has built a machine that can scan for signs of life in the universe. But what to do when it appears that someone or something has cryptically pinged back? Charlie (Josh Hutcherson), an engineer, is optimistic about pursuing first contact while Annika (Isabelle Fuhrman), a computer scientist, is cautious about revealing the existence of Earth to potentially hostile watchers. Sobol is very effective at laying out the stakes and turning indecision and incertitude into an effective low-boil suspense. And considering the huge stakes he’s playing with, he even manages to pull off a satisfying ending. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms.)
‘Exit 8’
Anybody who has ever let out a primal scream while being stuck in endless loops or facing dead ends on an automated help line will empathize with this film’s protagonist. The first hint that we are in for variations on a repetitive theme is the music: A commuter (Kazunari Ninomiya) listens to Ravel’s famously hypnotic “Boléro” on headphones, barely paying attention to the other passengers on his crowded train. But when he tries to leave the station and make his way out, he ends up wandering around antiseptic corridors, always running into the same man carrying a briefcase (Yamato Kochi). Naturally, Genki Kawamura’s puzzle box of a film brings to mind “Severance” and “Backrooms,” in which people coldly navigate anonymous and often labyrinthine spaces. The problem for all the characters in these stories is that they are forced to play games whose seemingly arbitrary rules they don’t understand. A cryptic poster in “Exit 8” suggests looking for “anomalies,” so our commuter starts to obsessively memorize every detail of his surroundings. More generally, a main theme appears to be the necessity of paying attention to your environment — including other people — in order to move on. (Stream it on Shudder.)
‘Lars Shrike Walks the Night’
A man (Kelsey Grammer) staggers around a desert landscape in shackles and what looks like a tattered jumpsuit. He only knows his name, Lars Shrike, but other than that he has no idea where he is or how he ended up there. “Am I narrating?” he asks. Why yes, and director Gary Walkow makes great use of Grammer’s plummy baritone. Eventually Lars finds his way to a suburban outpost — so either this wasn’t a prison planet, or Earth is a prison planet — and a welcoming library. Searching his name online, he discovers that Lars Shrike is a character in a book titled “The Trouble With Dick,” and the fictional alter ego of an author, Richard Kendred. So off he goes to Los Angeles to meet the man who created him.
Adding to the hall of mirrors is that Richard is portrayed by David Clennon, who played Lars in an earlier Walkow movie titled … “The Trouble With Dick” (1987). The director’s “Crashing” (2007) and “The Trouble with Dot & Harry” (2015) are also loosely connected, forming perhaps the most obscure tetralogy of modern cinema. Don’t worry, though: “Lars Shrike” works just fine on its own as a unique experiment in shoestring metafiction. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video or The Roku Channel.)
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