Directed By: Jeff Renfroe

Starring:  Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Zegers, Bill Paxton

One day, it started to snow, and it never stopped.

Conspiracy theorists love to H.A.A.R.P on (look it up) about weather manipulation, claiming that the government are controlling weather patterns for their own nefarious ends. But what if they’re right, and it all goes a bit tits up?

The Colony posits a future where vast weather machines have a bit of a malfunction, causing it to start snowing and never stop. This is obviously a bit of a problem, and humanity’s last desperate survivors huddle in facilities beneath the earth. Food is scarce, warmth is a commodity and tensions are high, but when a distress call is received from another colony, it’s up to Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) and his colleagues to venture into the snowy apocalypse to find answers.

What strikes you first about The Colony is how bloody grim everything is. The dingy, claustrophobic subterranean complex is contrasted by the unforgiving snowstorm outside, and it helps create this palpable feeling of dread. The very first scene introduces us to Mason (Bill Paxton) as he executes a man suffering from the common cold. The fate of the unwell, we are told, is usually a choice – take a bullet to the face, or take a long walk in the snow and die of exposure. This sounds like quite a harsh fate for someone with the sniffles, but it outlines the sheer desperation of this small community; they absolutely cannot risk exposure to any virus as it would likely wipe them out.

Laurence Fishburne’s Briggs starkly contrasts Mason as the composed, reasonable diplomat and leader of the colony. As an accomplished character actor, Fishburne effortlessly provides an air of nobility with his on screen presence. The colony and all it’s inhabitants might fail and be doomed, but he is content to die as civilized humans – rather than the ruthless, cold monsters Paxton would have them survive as.

When they receive the distress call from a nearby colony, it kicks into motion a chain of events that makes their original situation look like an episode of Cheers. Briggs leads a small party to investigate, leaving everybody at the mercy of Mason’s creeping psychopathy. But the cherry on this particularly bitter cake is the discovery of a pack of feral lunatics, whose hunger has spurred them into a murderous rampage.

A lot of credit for the success of The Colony’s horror elements belongs to the Feral Leader (Dru Viergever) – an imposing, bald savage who forgoes any kind of speech for deep, guttural roars. With his staring rage-filled eyes, he’s a memorable antagonist, and whenever he turns his intense sights on someone you can’t help but pucker your bum cheeks. Some credit should also be directed towards writer-director Jeff Renfroe, who uses a finely-tuned sense of pace and a relatively small budget to wring every last drop of tension into the atmosphere.

The only thing that seems to be out of place is the disarming and steadfast handsomeness of our young hero, played by Kevin Zegers, who looks like he’s put on a warm coat and stepped off the set of Hollyoaks. Even after receiving a brutal beating that should leave him with a face like a bag of smashed crabs, he emerges with little more than a slightly red face, which seems odd considering the realistic violence elsewhere in the film.

Relentlessly bleak, packed to the rafters with memorable characters and spearheaded by two superb performances from Paxton and Fishburne, The Colony is worth keeping an eye out for. It’s reminiscent of John Carpenter’s campy action b-movie Ghosts of Mars, had that film been made by the same Carpenter who gave us seminal horror films like The Fog and The Thing. I suspect The Colony doesn’t have the lasting power to be quite as influential as that makes it sound, but it’s certainly an enthralling and worthy addition to modern horror.

4/5