muppling It's mostly badly acted. The special effects are mostly awful. The dialogue is week. It needs an edit.But it's not all bad.The viewpoint character is an android, played adequately by Robin Kurtz. I have no idea whether she's a particularly good actor, because this role was supposed to be stiff and robotic. But she does it perfectly well.The dialogue and acting of most of the other characters is not good, not good at all. Cringeworthy, in places. Just ignore it and power through.The special effects aren't all terrible. Hah, I say that, but they are, really. It's just that sometimes they lift themselves to SyFy bargain- basement level and they seem good by comparison. The exterior shots are OK, but the film is let down by the painted nerf-gun level weapons, reactionless pew-pew effect and bizarre 90s-video-game standard mechanical bad guys.What I appreciated about the movie, on the other hand:The viewpoint character. She's mechanical and has no memory of why she was brought online. She doesn't even know which side of the war she's supposed to be fighting on. She doesn't have a burning desire to find out, either; she just plods on - spending 20 minutes finding some pants - in a way that seems strangely believable. Her brief interactions with other people on the station work quite well.The plot contains elements of many other films - but what doesn't? There's a time loop, zombies (I have no clue who thought that was a good idea), a prophesy and space marines. It's all been done. It's like the anti-terminator. If you ignore the zombies and dog-bot-things it comes together as something pretty original.The camera-work isn't at all bad either. Neither is the soundtrack (with the exception of the pop-pop guns).I've certainly seen much worse.In summary, the camera-work, sound, direction and acting lead all show promise.

nocpan I like those cheaper, less professional productions, always there is something interesting in them, I liked how the beginning met the ending, the concept is not very common. For a low budget movie the CG was OK yet could be improved. Props were terrible, Nerf guns painted in black and silver. Costumes? definitely needed an upgrade, I though Starship Rising had poor costumes, here it looked like everyone jest dressed themselves with what they had. Story is about an android trying to save humanity with two fractions fighting over a control of a space gun array. Seems like an OK theme to build on. Reminded me of those Starship Troopers continuations where they run around identical looking tunnels being picked off one by one by bugs and trying to save the world. Here we don't have bugs, but some poorly animated robots and zombie like people with bloody eyes. When the main character android Helen walked around for first 15 min naked around the space station I thought "serious lack of dialog" but after new characters were introduced I really wanted the lack of dialog, it was possibly the worst part of the movie. The cheesy, adolescent, out of place dialogs filled with half sentences and nonsense outbursts. Its like everyone tried so hard to be a character they are not and on top of it over colored it. I will not say "don't watch it", but will advise extreme caution. Notion of wasted time may be present after watching it.

TheLittleSongbird Of the seven low-budget movies seen in the past six weeks(the previous six being Aliens vs Avatars, The Amazing Bulk, Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor, Captain Battle: Legacy War, Bonesetter and Star Quest: The Odyssey) Earthkiller, aka Total Retribution, was the best of them. It does have one redeeming quality which was that the idea was good, which the previous six did not have. That said, that is not saying very much because Earthkiller is still a terrible movie that doesn't do its concept any justice, one of those movies that starts off bad, not in a long time have I seen an opening scene this bizarre, and gets even worse as it wears on.Earthkiller is very poorly made, almost like a failed student project, visually the best thing is the camera work, while it still often is dizzying there are glimpses of effort. Which is more than can be said for the lighting, which is at times too garish and others too dark(never appropriate), the cheap-looking sets which includes the most fake-looking space station you'll find anywhere in a movie and worst of all the truly appalling special effects, even the worst of SyFy and The Asylum have special effects as bad as here and they are on par with those of the aforementioned six movies. Earthkiller even incorporates blood and goes well overboard using it, even worse is that the blood doesn't even look like blood, instead looking like tomato ketchup that had been mixed with water.The dialogue for Earthkiller is so awkward it'd be hard to stifle any laughter as well as cheese ridden, while the story is incredibly padded with nowhere near enough to sustain nearly an hour and a half and doesn't even try to make sense, there's nothing remotely clever or original about it with the movie ending on a confused note. The sound has a muddied distant quality where sometimes you have to strain for some of the dialogue and line delivery. The direction is flat, the characters are literally over-familiar walking clichés with no personality(they are actually annoying and the movie has the sense of forgetting to actually develop them) and the acting is practically non-existent. To conclude, a complete turkey despite having a good idea, a shame. 2/10 Bethany Cox

suite92 Terran Special Forces versus Allied Airborne on a space station, whatever that might mean. Humans are being turned into zombies, sort of. These zombies are not weaker; instead, they are quicker, stronger, smarter, and less and less vulnerable to weapons as they get older. The zombie transformation is accomplished by programmed nanobots, not viruses or bacteria or radioactive substances. There are androids as well as humans and zombies.The protagonist, Helen, is an android who wakes up after a memory wipe. Half an hour in, I've got context, more or less.Throw in a solar cannon that creates wormholes through time. Right, why not? There's a mission to protect the cannon from the wrong people. Just what the 'real' mission is, is a bit wobbly.Throw in references to scripture. What scripture? Written by whom?Just what do these people eat or drink? Where to they get their energy? (No solar panels on the space station, no nuclear generator. Hm.) When did gravity generators get invented? The people walk around on the space station as if it were a building on Earth.Will the final mission be accomplished, so that scripture will be fulfilled? That seems to be the question.----Scores-----Cinematography: 7/10 Mostly good, but loaded with bad framing choices.Sound: 5/10 Poor.Acting: 0/10 Non-existent.Screenplay: 0/10 Boring, absurd, almost context free.SFX: 0/10 Beyond bad. Done by people who have no acquaintance with physics, or just hate it. The CGI is ridiculous for the most part. Blood effects are entirely laughable.--------Special mentionThree Black Holes for acting, screenplay, and SFX.