Native review: Two space explorers find themselves questioning their mission after losing communication with their home planet.
Native review, Kat Hughes.
Native Review
Two scientists; a young female, Eva (Ellie Kendrick), and older man, Cane (Rupert Graves), are hurtled through space. Their mission, to establish contact with the source of a distant musical transmission. As they venture further into the outer ranges of space, Cane loses contact with his psychic link to his home planet and begins to spiral out of control. It is then left to Eva to bring Cane back in line and stop the mission from going awry.
Native is a product of Liverpool-born first-time feature director, Daniel Fitzsimmons, and seeks to add a healthy amount of philosophical pondering to the genre. The movie is released in selected cinemas across the United Kingdom from Friday 26th February and offers a distinctly different take on what we’ve come to know in recent years as the science-fiction film.
Within Native, you will find much more of a two-hander character piece than your typical genre flick. There are no explosions or funny-looking aliens to behold here, it is a rather more subdued and intimate tale. For the setting, gone are the bright whites and shining metallics that we’ve come to identify with the genre. Instead we get darker, moody, red and yellow hues which aid in further enforcing the unfurling of Cane’s mind. With his setting and shot choices, Fitzsimmons shows that he has an eye for the beautiful and stylised. Native is only his first feature, but with visuals like this, it surely won’t be the last.
Native Review
The story trickles through slow and steadily, building up to an interesting climax. It also offers up a unique take on the couple-in-space tropes; there is no romance to be found here, which is a definite positive as these relationships have the tendency to feel forced. Native also offers up a bit of a gender role swapping, with our male lead being the one to fall to pieces and our heroine to be the strong one on whom he must rely. Our pairing hail from a hive-like society wherein twins are able to communicate telepathically, making Cane’s disconnection from home a more evocative prospect. He’s suddenly out on his own, able to think for himself for the first time, and the clash between himself and Eva plays out well.
Despite the interesting ideas and issues raised, Native is unlikely to be everyone’s cup of tea. As previously mentioned, the story moves at an unusually slow pace, and will no doubt lose the attention of many. Native is a film that commands the viewer’s attention and investment to truly experience and enjoy it, but at times it’s a big commitment. Being a story involving telepathy, there is inevitably a lot of long-distance communications made via this method, which has required a lot of voiceover. This can become rather tedious at times, and is perhaps an overused device for a film so short.
Oddly reminiscent of Dune in its style, Native is an aesthetic piece of science fiction philosophy, which will certainly entertain a distinct crowd of people, but may struggle to capture the imagination of the masses.
Native review, Kat Hughes, February 2018.
Native is released in select UK cinemas on Friday 23rd February 2018.
