Prospect has a lived-in, working-class vibe at odds with so much of the gleaming, brave new world that is the science-fiction cliché.
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The film hinges on Sophie Thatcher’s performance as Cee. In her feature-film debut, she brings a combination of determination and youthful naïveté to her performance that is essential to the entire movie working.
The filmmakers brilliantly set-up an atmosphere that feels uniquely cinematic and wholly original. But when impressive world-building is established and story takes over, Prospect quickly devolves into a mess of contrivances and overstuffed characters in its more problematic second half.
The Hollywood Reporter by Keith Uhlich
Pascal and Thatcher are an outwardly compelling team, though they’re playing constructs instead of characters, hollow vehicles racing through this ragged future as opposed to convincingly long-term inhabitants of it.
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
Perhaps the best use of Caldwell and Earl’s limited budget is their cast, which also includes Andre Royo and Anwan Glover as dangerous men. They help keep “Prospect” from becoming a gimmicky mash-up and make it more a study of real people just trying to get by far from civilization.
Constructing character does not appear to be Earl and Caldwell’s strong suit (what’s satisfying about Cee owes almost entirely to Thatcher, a fresh face who tricks us into assuming she’s just a callow teen, when in fact, she proves to be the film’s toughest character). On the other hand, the duo show a real aptitude for world building.
Western or sci-fi Western, Prospect never sets its sights higher than violent, quasi-poetic B-movie and as such does not disappoint.