Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Settlers’ on VOD, a Sparse Sci-Fi Drama Set on the Dreary and Dusty Mars Frontier

Now on VOD, Settlers is one of those where-do-they-pee?-oh-THAT’S-where-they-pee stories of hardscrabble frontier life. Except in this case, the frontier is on Mars, a dusty, reddish desert of rock and dust and sadness, where writer/director Wyatt Rockefeller deposits a three-piece family to do their best. It ain’t easy, especially when there’s a lurking danger on the horizon. Let’s see if they’re fit enough to survive.

SETTLERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: All that’s missing is the tumbling tumbleweed. Reza (Jonny Lee Miller) is the father, Ilsa (Sofia Boutella) is the mother and the daughter is Remmy (Brooklynn Prince of The Florida Project, hooray!) and the pig, well, I forget its name, but she’s just out there snuffling happily, pretty much unaware of its miserable existence. Dad teaches Remmy the constellations, mom cultivates plants and cooks dinner. There’s a big shed-like building and a living quarters with long hallways and the pigpen and the graveyard up on the hill, although I’m getting ahead of myself with that one. Nobody wanders too far from the settlement. When the kid asks, Reza talks of his former life on Earth in less than halcyon terms. He didn’t see a whale or an elephant or anything. What did he see? “Dogs,” he says, and we assume the planet has gone to precisely that.

One day, Reza walks off the farm for a while and comes back late and spooked, and Remmy strains to her her parents’ whispers. She awakens the next morning to the word “LEAVE” painted on the outside of their windows, looking in. This is when we see Reza’s intimidatingly large rifle. Wracked with worry, they hole up, staying quiet and away from the windows. “Is it his son?” Ilsa asks Reza, illuminating nothing. Eventually, Remmy sneaks out to check on the pig, ripping the band-aid off instead of slowly and agonizingly peeling it a millimeter at a time, because this siege has to end sometime, doesn’t it? Reza slings his rifle over his shoulder and heads out to take care of things as his wife and daughter sweat at home. Hours pass. A gunshot cracks in the distance. Who fired it? Who received it?

The answer arrives soon enough: A large man named Jerry (Ismael Cruz Cordova) arrives, and after he shrugs off a knife in the thigh courtesy Ilsa, he wins a scuffle. There’s talk between them about the claim to the settlement, and if I remain vague on the subject, it’s only because the movie is also only slightly less vague on it. They can come to a compromise, Jerry insists. It’s uneasy, especially the part where they bury Reza under a rock pile up on the hill. Little Remmy counts the days with hashmarks in the window filth as Jerry and Ilsa tend to the farm. Remmy stumbles upon a jaunty little robot that’s a metal crate with legs. She befriends it and names it Steve. Hi Steve. How’s it going. By the way, how exactly are they breathing the air on Mars, anyway?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Settlers is The Martian on heavy depressants with a Truman Show flourish, some Mad Max photography and the plot of about 40 old Westerns, with Shane being at the front of my mind.

Performance Worth Watching: We loved Prince in The Florida Project, and here she proves her comfort with the camera was no fluke. She’s lively and authentic while the adults are set to full metal gloom ‘n’ glower.

Memorable Dialogue: “Earth isn’t what it once was, you know.” — Reza harbors no sentiment for his former home

Sex and Skin: A disturbing scene that’s all too inevitable, but thankfully not particularly graphic.

Our Take: If you thought this little family’s existence was relentlessly pragmatic, wait’ll you see where it leads. That rawness has us wondering, how bad WAS it back on Earth, exactly? Must’ve been pretty toxic. As for the hows and whys of Reza and Ilsa’s past conflict with Jerry and his family, well, that’s an idea left to dangle somewhere in the ether of ugly old cowboys-and-Indians stories that were surely always whitewashed anyway. Not that Settlers passes judgment or takes a side; the power of suggestion is always a plus, but the film maintains a frustrating minimalist tack, with a lack of specificity that leaves its larger themes to dissipate into the expanse.

And so we’re left with this glum film whose characters slog around in the dust, enduring each other’s unwanted company and the relentless passage of time — quite literally for the latter, as the narrative jumps ahead several years so we can see Nell Tiger Free play teenage Remmy. Rockefeller keeps the story within tight quarters for reasons I won’t divulge (spoilers, Will Robinson, spoilers!), and posits the thought that maybe things are better outside those tight quarters. Frankly, it can’t get any worse. This particular life on Mars is dreary, with occasional spikes of high drama serving to remind us of one thing: humans gonna human.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Prince and Free nearly make Settlers worth a watch, but the film never finds its focus or establishes much dramatic drive.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

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