Domain (2016) User Reviews

Dystopian claustrophobic thriller

[jasha89 · 7/10 · 4 October 2018]

I was just lying in bed, trying to find something to put me to sleep, when I came across this interesting, if a bit overused, premise that comprises this movie. I figured it would be a low budget so and so sci-fi but I was surprised to find a well-acted, nicely shot, atmospheric dystopian suspense thriller.

There is a pandemic, and World Health Organization claims we are all doomed. Still, they have a plan. They will make half a million bunkers where lucky lottery winners will stay until the plague disappears. How long they'll have to stay inside? Could be decades!

After this opening set up we are following some of the lucky ones who made it to these small safe heavens. Dialogue is serviceable and not cringe worthy and the characters are interesting (some more and some less) while the atmosphere of the whole containment deal is pretty well presented. There are some clever ideas as to the ways those people choose to interact and keep a straight head during this unpleasant, but necessary lock up.

The film kept me interested to the very end. Some of the ideas come across as original (even if they are not really) which is very much appreciated from my side. Unfortunately, some of the actions of particular characters do seem strange and out of place which does leave a stain on the whole experience but it might be a bit unfair to hold it against the creators.

Interested to see what the Director/Writer has in store for us next. Small budget didn't keep him from making a solid first full length feature.

7 out of 10 from me.

Far better than I thought it would be

[namstonk · 6/10 · 3 October 2018]

Ok, firstly it is not brilliant nor awful. It is however well acted by the main cast and when you look at their subsequent previous credits you'll understand why. The genre yes has been used before, but this is well directed, the score is fitting (very much like an old John Carpenter score in places) and you actually like the characters portrayed. If you're a seasond sci-fi fan then yes you'll guess the ending but it doesn't matter, the time has gone by nicely thanks to a very well cast movie.

Déjà vu

[devotee-2 · 7/10 · 9 October 2018]

Do you have a strange feeling of "Déjà vu"? Like you've already watched this movie but you don't remember when or where? You might be right if you're old enough to have caught The Outer Limits TV series and its season 3, episode 13, titled "Dead Man's Switch " (1997).

To be honest, I really thought right from the beginning of the movie that I had already watched this movie before. However it was entertaining enough and well made to rate it with a 7. Despite the number of obvious "coincidences" between this movie and the Outer Limits' episode, the "original" plot change (global virus) and ending (I will avoid spoilers) makes it worth a watch.

I understand why some people can be disappointed by the movie since it might feel like a Twilight Zone/Outer Limits episode that was way too long for the story being told.

Very Good

[payasoingenioso · 7/10 · 7 March 2021]

The acting is great.

The character assortment works well, and each character is well developed.

The ending brings logic and reason to what I assumed were plot holes.

Not bad

[nturpin-99272 · 7/10 · 26 July 2020]

Quite watchable for most of the film, but fails when they get to the exposition/reveal part, which all feels a bit forced and a bit weak. Kind of explains what was done but without a compelling why. The return to confinement without social connection as an ending would work a lot better with a reason as to why, otherwise why not just return them to prison.

From the Dark comes the light

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 31 October 2018]

A pandemic wipes out much of the world's population. The WHO constructs 489,000+ survival bunkers known as LSB-3000. A lottery is held and people are put into the bunkers. They can communicate by video conference in groups of seven and are known by their city location. The film starts focusing on just one group of seven after five years.

Orlando (Kevin Sizemore) proves to be burdensome and is voted off the island. They disconnect his feed, placing him in complete solitary. Afterward, things start to break down and act up. One of the individuals is studying French and reading "No Exit" a book about people trapped in a personal hell.

Mildly interesting film. There are enough clues to have a basic idea of what is actually happening. The bulk of the film is shot in one room.

Guide: F-word. No sex. Side nudity only.

We gave it a shot!

[AandR_reviews · 6/10 · 27 August 2020]

Slow burn suspense with a good twist at the end. Didn't love it, but wasn't terrible. The acting wasn't terrible.

Average film, even if a little predictable.

[permaculture-45885 · 4/10 · 5 October 2018]

Watchable once. Do not think to re-watch it someday. On a similar topic, Moon (2009) was way better.

Goof : One of the character is learning French. At 37', we see him reading an article about the French Revolution on the computer. The article is plagued with grammar mistakes.

Very interesting

[service-193-407526 · 7/10 · 19 March 2021]

Well written and well acted this show will keep your attention all the way up to the twist ending. It's all very believable. Definitely worth watching .

A long line of clichè characters constantly arguing.

[sstn-149-414142 · 2/10 · 20 January 2019]

Completely unoriginal characters who of course do nothing but argue and spout exposition. Trapped in self sustaining bunkers with video communication, but they have no way to turn it off? Forced live feed with people you hate, sounds like nothing but an arena for constant arguing with the most stereotypical characters I have come across since the 80's. And the whole "trapped in a box together with people you don't get along with" idea was overused 10 years ago. Barely made it to 15 minutes of this film, and the characters made me want to end mankind. I do not have or wish to have an opinion of this overused tripe after seeing the whole thing, because I would probably finish myself before the film. If you like things like Big Brother, Paradise Hotel and Days of Our lives, wrapped in a doomsday scenario SciFi theme, maybe this will do something for you. What it did for me was completely kill my SciFi mood for today, and I'm going to YouTube to watch some funny cats because I'm angry and depressed now. The 2 star rating is exclusively because the actors themselves seem good enough, and I didn't have an aneurism..

Really good lowbudget thriller

[phenomina23 · 8/10 · 18 October 2018]

Kept my attention, the writing and acting were good and with a limited budget managed to tell a story in a way many bigbudget films fail.

Quality performances but a weak third act

[mreffgee · 6/10 · 27 January 2022]

The film feels fleshed out as it steadily plods along.

The actors are convincing in their various roles and the dialogue and direction is decisive and uncliched. However, the "twist" is broadcast a little too clearly and a little too early to really be surprising. Furthermore, after the big reveal at the end of act two, the film loses most of its momentum and descends into mere exposition.

Some visceral reaction to the revelations of the final act would have provided much needed energy. Instead the film limps unsatisfyingly into the closing credits.

average movie (minor spoiler)

[corytrevorson · 5/10 · 12 October 2018]

Decent, but not great. Something to watch late at night to make you sleepy. Not the greatest acting, but not the worst. One that bugged me was when they get tased toward the end, it knocks them out. That's not how getting tased works, it stings like an s.o.b. and you become more awake REAL quick!

Great Performances Bolster a Problematic Script.

[betchaareoffendedeasily · 8 July 2020]

There are a couple of problems with the trajectory of this story, but I will not be covering that because it would ruin the story. All I will say is there is a central plot point, which is highly unlikely once you get the full picture of the story. Does this make the film less enjoyable? I don't think so. The story is engaging because of the characters, and thankfully there is little painful over explanation by the characters to tell the backstory necessary for this kind of story, in fact there are some well-done expository moments in here that break up the monotony of the single setting.

Keep in mind, this isn't a fast paced film and the tension while there, is not as high as some might like, so avoid if you don't like slow-paced films, but the acting is actually quite good here, and the characters, even though they are not extremely fleshed out, partially due to the nature of the story, are interesting. I would call this a largely character-based narrative. I also think especially with recent events the appeal of a story where people chose to be quarantined for an undefined amount of time due to a plague that has wiped out the worlds population, might have a little more appeal than it would have last year.

I have watched many of these "single room" science fictions stories, be it "Cube", "Coherence", "Infinity Room", "Fermat's Room", "White Room", "The Exam", "Circle", and every single of those is a low-budget character-based dialogue driven film, except the awful White Room, The acting is better in "Domain" than each of the other afformentioned films(Coherence is the next best acting wise). In fact, I have seen Ryan Merriaman in several TV shows and films, and was quite surprised at the nuance and the way he handled his character, who he could have easily over-acted, but he kept it quite subdued, in the best way possible, to say more would ruin it. I actually really appreciate him as an actor now and believe he deserves much larger roles.

Again, if you like science fiction, particularly of the low-budget variety, there is much to like here. It isn't gonna blow your mind, but it is a solid story with some interesting ideas, and some of the best acting I have ever seen in a low budget film, it was refreshing to see for someone who watches a lot of low budget films.

Note, this movie is not for children, it has foul language, a good deal of violence, and there is some minor sexual content, if that bugs you, though you can skip ahead a minute or 2.

God Bless ~Amy

Definitely worth a watch

[markwha · 6/10 · 28 February 2021]

For a small budget film, this is a great achievement. For the viewer at home, it's a well acted, interestingly told story that was good enough to keep me from reaching for my phone and "half watching" like many of us do when the film isn't very good but we still want to see what happens at the end.

Ironically, the ending would be one of the weaker points here, and I think the explains some of the scathing reviews as the first two acts of he film are quite predictable but it wound up ending in a way that takes you off guard.

None the less, it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination and is a very worthy lockdown watch.

weird

[ops-52535 · 7/10 · 2 October 2018]

This film reminded me of one major film called the breakfast club,only this is purely trough digital screens and 6 peple talking to each other when living in solitude in their cells..a film filled with hope till it all ended in misery. as a film, it was the great editing that really knitted this story together,also a great performance by the cast, as their solo performaces are unique and minddraining,and puts great demands to their patience while acting

Hard to describe without spoilers

[justahunch-70549 · 4/10 · 11 July 2022]

This was kind of interesting for quite a while thinking it was a new take on a tired genre, though it was more than a little implausible, but then a twist comes that is not uninteresting, but it becomes something different and somehow not as surprising as I think the filmmakers intended. There is a familiarity with the concept presented. It then becomes a bit stupid and unpleasant and ultimately rather depressing. Britt Lower does a decent job, but the rest are just ordinary TV like performances. The usually enjoyable Beth Grant is unfortunately wasted in a role that is a big part of stupidity that arrives late in the game.

Wasn't what I expected

[maatkare0217 · 7/10 · 19 January 2020]

Slow but even though I saw the ending coming a mile off there were still some surprises. Very interesting concept / commentary on privatized prisons.

tense build-up to a disappointing ending

[TheSchinppenSchnaff · 5/10 · 22 April 2020]

This movie was clearly inspired by the Fallout video game series.

In a nutshell, Vault Tech builds hundreds of gigantic nuclear fallout shelters (Vaults) to preserve humanity in the event of nuclear war. Unbeknownst to the occupants the true purpose of the Vaults is to conduct inhumane experiments on the survivors to better understand how to rebuild society.

I think this was more congruent with the original intention of the Screen Play, but something prevented the movie makers from completing the story as they intended. The actual twist provided in the movie makes little sense in the context of the psychological stresses we see inflicted on the prisoners:

-torture through sleep deprivation; -the psychological tension between an isolated group of 5 men and only 2 women; -the psychological stress of 6 people being ostensibly sane and one party member being an admitted serial killer. -Several suicides that are allowed to happen despite the prisoners being under constant surveillance.

So many elements of the story point to the intended purpose of the experiment to inflict psychological stress on these prisoners for some nefarious purpose that was written out of the screen play.

But the biggest let down of the ending was the lame hand waving away of the most egregious plot-hole: Nadine tells Phoenix and Denver that all the prisoners were hand picked because they were expected not to be honest about their past an therefore not clue the group into the fact that they were all convicted felons... what? if you put 7 people into isolation for 5 years with NOTHING to do but talk to each other - the conversation will eventually happen. We're talking about putting these people in an environment where they will forge strong emotional connections - telling secrets will eventually be a form of bonding they share.

The ending we received in the end seemed bland, ad hoc and anti-climactic when put in the context of all the aforementioned clues.

But either way. It was well acted. The characters were all distinct and the set was design was adequate and the twist was not completely obvious. 5 out of 10

Never Under Estimate Humanity's Capacity To Be..... Punitive.

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 6/10 · 5 June 2020]

O rly? This is all this is going to be? A Bunch of 'survivor's sitting around in bunkers talking to each other over a web connection aka domain?? Okay Got it.

Hey watching this during Covid19 Pandemic 'lockdown' orders so I guess the timing is about right!!!!

Okay so impress me!!!!

The thing about it is, people are really so stupid that what happened to these people could really be done.

+1 Star for the reveal. I did enjoy the interaction between Phoenix and Denver. Especially after the reveal.

The very end did not really impress but it certainly fit.

Just know that from the Dark comes Light!!!!!!!

all that build up for nothing

[plasssaskia · 2/10 · 20 May 2020]

In the beginning the movie was slow and towards the middle it got a little interesting with them trying to escape and figure out why they were there. The ending did not make this movie worth it. They were prisoners and this was all a experiment like really? They directors couldn't come up with anything better?And they were taken out one by one and then put back in make no sense.

excellent

[floatingpolarbear · 10/10 · 1 May 2020]

This is the right movie for these times. It not only has topics that are hugely relevant during the public health emergency we are living in, but manages interesting twists and explorations of the human soul. I love the acting and the characters and the intelligent flow of the story. Absolutely loved the prayer.

WORST MOVIE EVER

[tarq_t_f16 · 1/10 · 4 October 2018]

Don't even think to watch this movie !, I just waste two hours of my life watching this movie and I feel guilty for that.

At times very slow but well acted.

[adrianjgomez-11883 · 5/10 · 26 October 2019]

Although I found some of the long dialog boring, the acting is above average. What kills this movie for me is that once you figure out the twist many of the things that are occurring or occurred do not make sense. They hope that the audience has amnesia. This is the only way this movie makes sense.

Abysmal and Unwatchable

[jkling-1 · 2/10 · 19 September 2019]

I had some hopes from the description. The premise was "interesting". Reviews were very mixed so I figured it was worth a shot and started to watch it. After 5 minutes I could not take it anymore. Just horrible.

The dialogue was positively insipid. Acting was poor and melodramatic. Thank goodness that I did not waste any more time on this.