400 Days

Despite a decent cast, SyFy films foray into theatrical (and VOD) is a respectable effort that nonetheless fails to go anywhere interesting. Directed by sophomore writer/director Matt Osterman, "400 Days" is a contained thriller about four crew members participating in an experiment created to test human's ability to be cut off from the world for an extended period of time; essentially to determine the capacity for lengthy interstellar space travel. Grant Bowler plays Walter, the head of the project who picks drunken bad-boy Theo (Brandon Routh) up from jail before putting him in front of a handful of press before the four candidates are sent underground to begin their four-hundred day isolation. The other candidates are doctor Emily (Caity Lotz), chef/botanist Bug (Ben Feldman), and tech-guy Dvorak (Dane Cook).

Once underground, the four get used to their quarters and settle in. The film quickly advances days and months until about the half way mark when they are suddenly cut off from the world altogether. From there things get a bit stranger and (thankfully) more interesting. But that interests wanes when we are still not given any answers and the plot devolves into a sort of home invasion thriller.

Thankfully, Osterman has cast that makes the film rise about standard Syfy Z-movie fare. Lotz ("Arrow") is always effective. Feldman ("Mad Men") -- while doing his usually doubting, nervous Woody Allen schtick -- still makes his character believable. Cook is good as the hot-head, but it's a role we've seen in these types of space/contained films before so the character tends to grate on the nerves. Routh probably has the most complex of characters, but none of it is really explored enough for us to care about.

Which is the problem. The characters aren't set up enough for us to know too much about them or to invest in them. The reason for their isolation is vague and based on the press conference (attended by about twenty-five reporters), the whole thing seems to be of no significant importance. (Why wasn't this a huge news event attended by all aspects of the military, space program, government -- even the President?) Once inside, we get the standard "I'm going crazy in here" type of character development only to have a few genuine "wtf" moments that never really go anywhere concrete. The end is a total cheat, leaving the audience to make up their own minds as to what really happened. In that sense, there is no point in really checking this indie out. Despite an interesting set-up, spending four hundred days with this crew ends up feeling like it.