Kill Command (2016)

Directed by: Steven Gomez | 99 minutes | action, horror | Actors: Thure Lindhardt, Vanessa Kirby, David Ajala, Mike Noble, Bentley Kalu, Tom McKay, Kelly Gough, Osi Okerafor, Damian Kell, Tim Ahern, Sam Huntington

It has been a tried and tested concept since James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’ from 1986: tough soldiers who meet their equal in a science fiction setting in a ruthless battle, often against robots or aliens. ‘Kill Command’ is yet another song on this list. Compared to some comparable editions, ‘Kill Command’ is quite entertaining, although debut director Steven Gomez offers us little originality.

Following a mysterious signal on an island where new military technology is being tested, a team of soldiers led by Captain Damien Bukes and cyborg Katherine Mills sets out to investigate. They find a deserted island patrolled by self-contained drones. They soon discover that they are not alone: ​​a group of advanced battle bots has run amok and is now after them. Soon, Bukes and his platoon are fighting for their lives. Meanwhile, Mills appears to have a mysterious connection to the robots.

‘Kill Command’ follows the pattern of great-grandfather ‘Aliens’ perfectly, complete with a humanoid robot distrusted by the rest of the pack. The robots look nice, but the design isn’t terribly distinctive compared to what we already know from movies like ‘Terminator Salvation’, ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Star Wars’. Gomez does manage to put down a visually impressive film with a relatively small budget, which can pass for a larger Hollywood production.

The cast consists of debuting actors or names that we mainly know from bit parts in more famous films. Although they have little to work with and the characters are not explored in depth, they also manage to keep the film entertaining. Thure Lindhart (‘The Bridge’, ‘The Last Kingdom’, ‘Into the Wild’) casts a characteristically stiff army captain with a good dose of common sense, and Vanessa Kirby (‘The Crown’, ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout’) makes of Mills the only really intriguing character. Mills, who identifies people through scanners in her eyes and can then look up all kinds of personal information (which she shares without shame), is a kind of living Facebook that gives us a glimpse of a future world in which technology determines our lives even more than now. Furthermore, ‘Kill Command’ has few deeper layers and it is mainly an entertaining hour and a half that ends exactly as you expect.