Battle for Skyark - Blu-ray

Movie: In the not-too-distant future, Earth has become an infested planet whose surface no longer provides a habitat for humans. It is now a world full of mutated monsters from which the surviving humans have fled into space. They have built a new society in SkyArk, an artificial city in Earth orbit. But space and resources are scarce. Therefore, all the orphans are exiled back to Earth. There they found the Camp of the Fallen and fight the monsters with all means. To give them hope, their leader Rusty invents the legend of a boy with 13 shadows who would save them and allow them to live in peace. When Rags, son of an insurgent, is branded with 13 marks of shame and banished to Earth, the children see him as their savior. He is supposed to help them find the Blue Drop that gives the monsters their power. But it soon becomes clear that Rags cannot live up to his role as savior...

Battle for Skyark, the feature debut of director and screenwriter Simon Hung, is a dystopian vision of the future whose premise is strongly reminiscent of Niell Blomkamp's Elysium, mixed with the lost boys from Steven Spielberg's Hook. Some elements of the story, even if it may be borrowed from other movies, and at least at the beginning also the visual realization reveal some potential. But Hung, unfortunately, barely manages to exploit that. For better effects and more talented actors he simply lacked the budget. And as the film reveals major weaknesses here, the glaring script flaws also become much more apparent. If you listen to the bonus material of the crew members responsible for costumes, sets or effects, you will notice that a lot of enthusiasm and euphoria was put into the work. It is also to Hung's credit that he dared to give the story a very uncompromising, dark twist about halfway through the film.

However, no matter how good the ambitions and the heart and soul of everyone involved is quite palpable, not all weaknesses can be concealed by this. The fact is that the low budget is very clearly noticeable in the visual realization. The young actors try hard, but remain extremely colorless throughout. Especially lead actor Caon Mortenson lacks experience as well as charisma to carry the movie. Also, his trying co-stars don't manage to give the rather thin dialogues any strength. In addition, the film never seems to be able to quite decide whether it wants to be an exciting youth adventure, or a gritty sci-fi thriller for a more adult audience.

All this leads to Battle for Skyark only being able to impress positively to a very limited extent. For viewers between 14 and 17 years, who just want to experience an exciting adventure with young heroes and (rather harmless) monsters and do not yet attach too much importance to sophisticated dialogues, originality and great acting, the science fiction film certainly offers some entertainment value. But otherwise, no real enthusiasm can arise in view of the many weaknesses, which is why in the end there is only a conditionally worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: Since the film is rather a smaller, inexpensive production, no audiovisual top quality at blockbuster level should be expected. Nevertheless, the picture and sound of the Blu-ray can absolutely convince overall. The image sharpness is on a high level and sometimes pleasantly powerful coloration fits well with the end time atmosphere of the story. The sound can also convince, with good mixing of dialogue and a few decent sound effects creating a coherent soundscape. Good!

Extras: Bonus features include a brief look at The World of Battle for Skyark (approx. 7:11 mins), the trailer, programme tips and some interviews (approx. 16 mins). Okay!

Conclusion:Battle for Skyark is a dystopian SiFi thriller with some good ideas, but overall suffers from an extremely weak script and the very low budget that is clearly visible in places. The obvious heart and soul that director Simon Hung and his team put into the movie prevents it from degenerating into completely irrelevant B-movie trash, but unfortunately it can't make up for all the weaknesses either. Younger viewers with low standards for dialogue and acting could be thoroughly entertained. For all others, however, unfortunately, despite the decent implementation of image and sound and the short, but quite worth seeing extras: only conditionally recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp