Filmmaker Marc Price garnered quite a reputation for himself with his debut feature, Colin. The film had a very small budget with reports stating that it was only around £50, enabled by Price calling in favours from friends and family to help turn his dream of being a filmmaker into a reality. Since then, he’s gone on to make several more films, mainly within the horror realm, but has just created his first science-fiction film, Dune Drifter.
Once again having very little money to work with – although considerably more than Colin’s budget – Price once more proves that he knows how to spend money well. For all its indie trappings, Dune Drifter looks spectacular, and at times more expensive than some big budget sci-fi projects. The VFX work during the space travel sequences is a gorgeous rainbow spectrum of lights that is so colourful, it makes Valerian look dull. To save money, Price constructed the cockpit inside his living room and used projectors to help generate that feeling of space. Then, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, his team was forced to work remotely on all the post production. It has certainly not been an easy ride, but this does not mar the visual look and feel of the film at all.
Price is obviously a fan of mainstream science-fiction with nods to Star Trek, Aliens and Starship Troopers amongst others appearing within Dune Drifter. By sticking close to these institutions, he doesn’t have to do as much work to get the audience on board with his world of the future. It’s a world of science-fiction that we’ve seen before, making it easy to settle into to watch the story unfold. Iceland (the place, not the shop) doubles for an alien planet, and Price has found a rather stunning plot of land in which to film. The landscape looks harsh and almost alien, and so ticks off a massive component of the film, again for a fraction of Hollywood costs.
And here’s where Dune Drifter falls apart; the story just isn’t as developed or as compelling as it tries to be. We begin aboard several space vessels as we meet a group of fighters about to join an epic space battle. We flit from vessel to vessel getting snapshots of all the characters, but with helmets obscuring their identities, we never really know who anyone is. That doesn’t matter much however, as the battle goes awry and one ship and its pilots finds itself marooned on an enemy planet. With her co-pilot injured, Adler (Phoebe Sparrow) has to do all she can to keep them both alive as she desperately tries to find a way for them off of the planet. With the planet’s atmosphere being toxic, we never see our heroine’s full face, which enforces a barrier that is hard to get past. Yes, it’s always a bit silly when planets just happen to have breathable air, but with Adler being our only real character, we could make an exception. As Adler treks around doing her best Matt Damon in The Martian impression, the film loses all momentum, and once it has gone, it’s hard to claw back.
A technically strong and engaging project, Dune Drifter is dragged down by a flimsy story and weak characters. What Price does prove once again though is that you don’t need a lot of money or crew to create a film that can look ten times its cost.
Dune Drifter was reviewed at Arrow Video Frightfest Halloween.
Dune Drifter arrives on VOD and Digital HD on leading digital platforms and DVD on 1st December 2020.
Dune Drifter
Summary
Technically and visually solid, Dune Drifter would have benefited from a little more time developing its story.
