Kye Cortland (Dan Mor) is a political prisoner trying to escape a mining colony. A rebellion recruits him one day to rescue his father from a totalitarian government and he acquiesces, but during his mission he accidentally crash-lands on a desert moon of strategic value to both warring sides. Now he must survive and find a way off the moon, with the "help" of his ship's AI, Re3f (Shaun Micallef, giving a surprisingly effective dramatic vocal performance).
This 2015 Aussie science fiction flick, which writer-director Jesse O'Brien made for just $150 000, is like The Martian meets Mad Max meets WALL-E. But it's actually based on a film school short O'Brien made in 2012 for just $600. The result is a rather suspenseless but nonetheless intriguing and confident outer-space survival movie, and certainly one in the hard science fiction tradition (think writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, whose works were notably more factually scientific than other SF writers). Indeed it's very low on action but that's the point, as our hero is a mostly lone figure in his environment anyway, and Mor plays him with just the right blend of grit, vulnerability and composed loneliness.
Samuel Baulch's photography is calmly paced and focused, his and O'Brien's editing is never flashy or too subtle, and Ryan Stevens compliments it all with a suitably earthy and ominous score. For me, Arrowhead shoots and hits its target. 8/10.
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