Review of Voyagers (2021) by Ronath — 15 Apr 2021

Basically *The Lord of the Flies* in space.

It's a horror story about a potential issue with Generation Ship, starships that have to travel so far at such slow speeds (such as is currently possible) that multiple generations have to be born on the ship, and the colonists, have no real touchstones to Earth beyond records they bring.

In Voyagers, they try to minimize this by raising the crew in isolation for their first decade and a half before sending them on their way, with one parental figure. Concern about overpopulation and how the kids will turn out as they grow older, they're drugged to dull their personalities, with the plan for the second and third generations born in incubation chambers rather than through intercourse. This plan falls apart as a few of the crew, being intelligent twenty year olds, discover the drug and not sure what it's purpose or reasoning for it is, stop taking it. They promptly become sensation junkies, which isn't too bad until the lone adult dies suddenly and the rest of the thirty member crew also stop taking 'the blue'. With only a handful of documents and media from their 'father' left over (which were supposed to be destroyed to ensure the crew wasn't tainted by Earth) they struggle with concepts that most people of their ages should be done with, like fear of the dark, fear of strange sounds, lack of understanding of death or harm. They aren't mentioned specifically, but hinted at, the majority of the crew don't know the words to describe their emotions, because they haven't had them, or a reason to explain them.

An interesting movie, with interesting themes, and perfectly well done, worth seeing at least once, but probably not a rewatch for me.