PROSPECT – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

Cee (Sophie Thatcher) — a really memorable teen-girl protagonist who is badass yet who still feels like kid — and her dad, Damon (Jay Duplass), arrive on a remote moon — which looks green and inviting but don’t try to breathe the air — on the trail of a big gem-prospecting take. Their work isn’t about mining: it’s more like pearl-diving, except the clams are alien creatures; we never even know if those creatures are plant or animal or of some other kind of biological kingdom as yet unknown on Earth. Getting at their valuable treasures is tough work, though. And then, as they’ve barely begun the job, they encounter Ezra (Pedro Pascal), another prospector, who is not the friendliest type…

Best not to know more than this. Where this goes takes an unexpected thread of working-class practicality the likes of which science fiction onscreen rarely deals with. Prospect’s future is not an optimistic, shiny one; it’s a realistic one, at least from today’s perspective, in which grubbing for a living is just what everyone has to do and in which risks — even potentially dangerous ones — are worth it for a chance to escape the grubbing. The characters here are drawn simply but sharply; is anyone truly making poor choices here, or necessarily desperate ones? Continue reading…