Writer and Director: Steve Stone
British sci-fi Deus gets all the clichés of space travel out of the way in its opening minutes. Spacemen waking up from their hibernation after long voyages? Tick. A talking computer? Tick. People in vests? Tick. Some opera-y sounding music as the spaceship pushes through the galaxies? It’s all there. Perhaps it’s impossible not to have these familiar tropes, but what’s left, once the clichés have been dispensed with, is rather a rushed story about the possible presence of God in deep space.
Achilles (why would anyone call their spaceship Achilles knowing that its godly namesake had a weak spot that could destroy him?) has been commissioned to investigate a mysterious black sphere which has appeared out of nowhere at the edge of the universe. As the ship approaches, the sphere suddenly emits a message: the same word over and again: Deus. ‘God’, scientist Karla helpfully explains.
The six-man crew argue about what they should do next. Blogger Si, who can type fluently on an upside down keyboard, is petrified and is already cutting pentagrams into his flesh. He disappears into the bowels of the ship, and it seems as if the film will be focussed on finding him before he kills off the crew, one by one. But his fate is dealt with surprisingly quickly.
Karla also wants to go back but her orders from the commander on ship, Sen, and from Vance (a strange blend of businessman and politician) back on earth is that she land on the sphere to investigate further. Could this really be where Heaven is located? She doubts it.
For a while it’s an intriguing set-up – although it can’t make up for the clunky dialogue – but within minutes it seems the mystery is resolved with a moral decision that is not discussed enough for one to be mulling over once the film has finished. Karla’s no-nonsense approach leaves little room for ambiguity.
As Karla, Claudia Black gives a solid performance and deals as well as she can with the script, but despite the fact that we know more about her than any other character she still feels sketchily drawn. Richard Blackwood is totally miscast as her commander, and he has little to do except simmer with menace as he watches the rest of the crew argue on his iPad.. As Vance, who beams up his hologram from earth, hardworking actor Phil Davis is as transparent as his image, and so, again, the mystery is curtailed before it’s even begun.
While it seems as if writer/director Steve Stone is afraid of deeper philosophical debate about religion and the end of the world, he has created a film full of atmosphere and, although all space films rely on a certain measure of loneliness, the Achilles and its crew provide desolate images. Deus looks good, but it lacks depth. ‘In Heaven no one can hear you scream’ seems like a suitable tagline for this one.
Deus is on Digital, VoD and DVD on 13 September.
