Spaceship Review

Spaceship, written and directed by Alex Taylor, is a terrible film that confuses pretentious for profound and insufferable for poetic. It tries to be a celebration of teenage expression and identity but ends up being little more than a thoroughly unwatchable waste of time. Free of the cumbersome restriction of having a structured plot, Spaceship instead consists of three stretches of utter nonsense that are about thirty minutes each. They're bookmarked by events that vaguely resemble plot points. Event A: Roughly thirty minutes in, cyber-goth teen Lucidia (Alexa Davies) disappears. Event B: Thirty or so minutes later, her friends sort of decide to go look for her, except not really. What happens in between? That's a very good question. The answer is nothing. Spaceship seems to revel in the absence of meaning, as well as the directionless exploration of vague, pretentious nonsense. Its single greatest achievement is making a 90-minute movie feel like it's at least three hours long. The characters are absolutely insufferable; if you can even call them characters. They're mostly just a disorganized assortment of counter-cultural quirks and oddities, so concerned with expressing themselves that they apparently forgot what it was they're even supposed to be expressing. Even the characters that aren't teens in unusual outfits acting in bizarre ways are dull. Gabriel (Antti Reini), Lucidia's father exists and appears in a few scenes. That is all. He's kind of the main character, in that he's one of maybe two or three characters that actually does something that actually kind of moves the plot forward. The other main character is Tegan (Lara Peake), who stands out because she doesn't stand out as much the others do. There's also the unforgettable character of Vampire Boy (Harry Jarvis). Spaceship is a black hole of self-indulgence that tries so hard to be audacious and thought-provoking that it completely backfires and ends up being nothing at all. It's not intellectually stimulating, has no emotional resonance, no narrative substance, no characters worth investing in and seemingly no point in even existing. It's entirely possible that there are people out there who will genuinely enjoy this movie for what it is and will somehow be able to take something away from it. It certainly gives off a "love it or hate it" kind of vibe. If nothing about the first five minutes or so even remotely interests you, quit while you're ahead because Spaceship is not going to suddenly win you over after that. The only thing waiting for you is a seemingly never-ending spiral of dull despair and mounting frustration. Watching Spaceship was one of the most deeply unpleasant viewing experiences I've ever had and I've seen The Beaster Bunny in its entirety. I wanted nothing more than for this movie to just end. It doesn't even leave much of an impression. It's so aimless and random that over time, the details fade away and the only thing you're left with is the contempt it elicited.