Way too many thrillers set in space are just Aliens with the serial numbers filed off. For every Event Horizon, there’s a dozen movies that apparently just can’t shake Sir Ridley Scott. That said, it looks like Equinox might buck the trend for once, since there aren’t any aliens in the plot description.
Plenty of crazy people though!
Really, the good news here is that Paramount is putting together a B-movie unit willing to fund and release movies like this:
Paramount’s low-budget genre Insurge label is going sci-fi with Equinox, which is being written by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes. Project details are being kept secret but it is being described as “Dead Calm in space,” according to sources.
Dead Calm, for those who don’t remember their late ’80s Australian thrillers, was a movie about Nicole Kidman being trapped on a boat with Sam Neill and Billy Zane. It’s actually a pretty good movie, marking one of the few movies where Zane just doesn’t fall on the scenery like a rapacious termite, so if you’re going to crib from a movie for a space thriller, that’s the movie to crib from.
We hope Paramount keeps it up. There’s been a distinct lack of lower-budget genre movies out of Hollywood lately, and it’s really there that you often find the most creativity and style. And, failing that, it’ll be nice to have another source of cheesy genre movies beyond Lionsgate.