Guy Lodge Film CriticIf there’s life on Mars, there must also be death on Mars: That’s the plainest takeaway from “Settlers,” a stark, scorched, occasionally jolting sci-fi slow burn in which relocating to the red planet can’t save humanity from its basest instincts.
Tracing the tumultuous household dynamics of four ex-earthlings over the course of a decade, as they attempt to forge a new life on a hostile surface, Wyatt Rockefeller’s polished, confident debut feature succeeds most vividly as a feat of minimalist world-building — constructing an overwhelmingly desolate Martian farmstead in South Africa’s Namaqualand desert, in which avenues of exploration feel infinite, and escape impossible.
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