Review of Captive State (2019) by Dharma — 01 Jun 2019

Captive State is one of the biggest disappointment for me in 2019 so far. The trailer hooked me completely: an image of a stadium singing the Star Spangled banner while an ominous shadow, presumably a spaceship, laying across it.

What you have instead is a pedestrian flick that is reminiscent of any 'police state' type of film or heck..even TV series as a matter of fact. The era of 'peak TV' as we know it now has created series with the production values of 'middle range movies': be it 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'A Man from High Castle' among the meaty offering available today.

Captive State took a similar route but in a completely rushed way: a certain world building is rushed in the first 10 minutes. Characters are unappealing and just being skimmed through. The titular aliens? Well, for a race that was so advanced, they actually behaved like the xenomorphs from the Alien series.

They are designed to give you a jump scare. As it is, this is a poor attempt in modernizing a more superior series: 'V', with a seemingly 'menacing / benevolent' alien race taking over the world and instilling a 'Nazi' like state.

If it was made as a TV series in a streaming service, it would have been passable. As a movie however, a completely forgettable experience.