Offworld: Alien Planet

I will refrain from naming names, but I once had a personal connection to someone involved in the making of Offworld: Alien Planet. That relationship ultimately soured when this individual revealed themselves to be more self-involved and egotistical than I had initially realized. Our falling out stemmed from their complete misreading of a light-hearted remark, a reminder that not everyone is equipped to recognize humour, especially when it challenges their inflated self-image.

Turning to the film itself: Offworld: Alien Planet is, to put it bluntly, a disjointed and incoherent effort. While principal photography wrapped in 2016, the production became mired in countless behind-the-scenes complications, which resulted in years of delay. Post-production was repeatedly stalled, and the film only limped to release relatively recently, courtesy of an American distributor that saw potential where others might not have.

The most significant issue lies in the film's untempered ambition. Attempting to craft an expansive science fiction epic on a reported budget of roughly £10,000 was always going to be a herculean task, one that the production was ill-equipped to manage. Good intentions and lofty aspirations do not compensate for the practical necessities of filmmaking: a strong foundation, skilled collaborators, and realistic scope.

There is now vague talk of a potential short-form spin-off. Frankly, I remain skeptical. Given the torturous path of the original film and the director's unfortunate tendency to alienate colleagues, it seems highly unlikely that any such project will come to fruition, let alone result in a worthwhile product.

Offworld: Alien Planet serves as a cautionary tale in independent filmmaking. It's what happens when vision outpaces viability, and when perfectionism and ego override the need for discipline, structure, and collaboration. There is no shame in dreaming big, but without the proper infrastructure to support those dreams, the final product will inevitably collapse under the weight of its own ambition. This film is a case study in exactly that.

When I sat down to watch the 2024 sci-fi movie "Offworld" here in 2025, I had never heard about it. But then again, sci-fi movies is usually not my go-to genre of movies for entertainment. But every now and again I opt to check out a sci-fi movie if the movie's cover or synopsis seems interesting enough. And I will say that the cover for this 2024 movie from director Terry Cooper seemed interesting. However, I fear that the movie's cover was overselling the movie by a lightyear or two, because this was most likely a low budget venture.

The movie release that I sat down to watch was titled "Offworld: Alien Planet", oddly enough. Regardless, I opted to give the movie the benefit of the doubt.

And this was indeed a low budget sci-fi venture.

Writers Terry Cooper and Chris Lynch put together a rather bland storyline and script. The narrative was rather sluggish and it took director Terry Cooper forever to go nowhere, and that made it quite a test of will to sit through this ordeal of a movie. I can't claim that I was particularly entertained or impressed with this movie, and it definitely did nothing to put my reluctance of sci-fi movies to shame.

I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, which is actually something I do enjoy whenever I sit down to watch a movie. For a movie such as this, I will say that the acting performances were actually fair.

Visually then the movie was actually not too shabby, for a low budget production that is. I've seen far worse special effects and CGI effects in movies with bigger budgets, so at least that spoke in favor of the overall impression of the movie. However, I had a huge difficulty buying into believing that this movie was supposed to take place on a foreign planet.

Perhaps diehard sci-fi fans will get a much bigger kick out of watching "Offworld" than I did as a casual viewer. I am definitely never returning to watch this movie a second time, as it was a struggle in itself the first time around.

My rating of director Terry Cooper's 2024 movie "Offworld" lands on a two out of ten stars.

This is not a Hollywood production spending many millions. This is a tiny production made by people passionate about films made on a miniscule budget. They have squeezed every drop of production value out of the budget and put it onto screen. The actors volunteered their time and poured their hearts into this movie, exhausting themselves over a very short shooting period and even getting sunburned in winter. The VFX were created by volunteers and they look great. True Hollywood VFX are better but then they have massive budgets and way more people working on it and still many VFX shots in Hollywood movies look bad, mainly due to the VFX companies getting no time and being paid the least the studios can get away with.

I enjoyed this movie, you just have to remember how it was made and not compare it to Hollywood.