Beyond The Trek is a 2017 sci-fi mysteri film about a deep space mining vessel that has been adrift for two years, its crew having brutally killed each other, but the reason for the bloodbath is unknown.
The common denominator in most low-budget sci-fi movies, especially those in the modern age of more affordable CGI is the lack of action as budgets force these movies into dialogue-heavy stories rather than big visual effects driven adventures. Such is the case for Ian Truitner‘s Beyond the Trek, a film originally titled Teleios and rechristened for its DVD release, clearly attempting to ride on the coattails of a familiar name, though its new moniker is far less mysterious. Either way, the movie is a space mystery that might look good but is a limiting experience.
In the future, a small space ship named Teleios, with a crew of five genetically superior humans called GC Humans (after Glen Crest Industries) are on a mission to retrieve the cargo of a ship that’s gone silent. Upon arrival, they discover that only one member of the cargo’s ship’s crew is alive, the rest brutally murdered. His name is Travis (Weetus Cren) and he’s been alone a long time, seemingly modifying LULU (Ursula Mills) the ship’s artificial lifeform into a sexually-compatible female. He’s taken aboard the Teleios under some kind of PTSD, spouting literary quotes from notable old books in their native languages. But where is the cargo and what happened to the others?
It might sound a bit like something more close to Paul W. S. Anderson‘s Event Horizon than anything from the Star Trek universe, and it’s a fair comparison, though not quite to scale. The GC Humans, who include Commander Linden (Lance Broadway), Iris Duncan (Sunny Mabrey), Chris Zimmer (T.J. Hoban), Emma Anderson (Christian Pitre), and Doctor Orson (Mykel Shannon Jenkins), are all superior humans, and each begin to mysteriously breakdown in different ways and face the truths about the horror aboard one ship and something that is connected to a conspiracy back on Earth. It becomes a trip of deep conversation intermixed with a few moments of low-intensity action, the entire movie set in the small confines of the ship.
Admittedly, there’s a good story here, written by Truitner, and he does a lot with the limitation of the budget, the film heavy with existentialist themes about the nature of humanity, though it all looks and feels more like an episode of a sci-fi television show, which might be justification enough for the new name. The whole crew is a group of model-types in skin-tight outfits however the acting is far better than expected and there is some genuine tension in the second half. It’s not that hard to predict where it’s all going though and the there’s just not enough momentum to really keep it running. A decent low-budget sci-fi thriller for fans of the genre.