Make My Day

 Next on my backlog challenge list: Make My Day, a science-fiction horror series created for Netflix.

Counting 8 episodes, this is set on the prison planet Coldfoot, and unfortunatly features heavy CGI drawing, something I'm not a fan off, especially as this looks like a video game cutscene and not a proper anime.

On the prison planet, humans are forced to mine Sig, a mineral that improves quality back on Earth as it can be used for a lot of things.  Criminals are brought there under the false pretence of cohabitation with the regular civilisations, but this is a lie as they are oppressed by their overseers.  

But one day something goes wrong in "The Cauldron" as the mine is called, and the guards are send in to battle what is causing the trouble in there.  Jim, one of the new guards, sees strangely mutilated corpses on their way there, as they go look for survivors in what is said to have been only a cave-in.  They discover the cave-in opened paths into a whole system, and set out to look.  They come across a sort of hatchery, before something drags Jim off.  He finds the remnants of the previous team, as well as a survivor... and the monsters awakened by the mining efforts.

The sluglike creatures dispatch quickly of the rescuers, as they are immune to gunfire, the bullets absorbed in their slimy bodies.  The few survivors escape the mine, but the slugs are coming out as well, causing a grave danger to all planet inhabitants as they are seemingly immortal.

 

 

Realising they must evacuate, the prison is being assaulted by the beasts, resulting in a huge massacre under both the guards and the prisoners.  As the situation gets desperate, Jim must choose between his life or that of all the others, and picks the former, but hesitating the captain flies off, escaping with a small flyer before blowing up the launch bay.  He reunites with the convict he saved earlier, Walter, as they deduct the beasts are after the Sig ore.  

Together they look for a way to escape, but Jim wants to return to the mine to try and kill the beasts before they kill everything on the planet.  Fleeing the surface, they find the situation the same everywhere, including his family who had waited for him in vain.  He finds Marnie though, pregnant, and as more troops arrive including his captain they try to flee and get a ship off planet.  Walker manages to pick them up with other survivors, but they don't know where to go.

They learn the creatures where discovered about a month ago by the survey team, which reached the same conclusions as Jim about the beasts.  Considered a hero when arriving in dr Hadson's research lab, Jim is ambushed by captain Bark in the toilets.  Beaten and locked up, he is let out by others and saves dr Hadson from one of the beasts.  He makes his way to the city command to warn them from the upcoming danger, learning what Walter's crimes are as he asks for his parole in return.

Finding Walter beat up in jail, but set free, they meet the initial scientist, Boyd, who wrote about the beasts upon their discovery.  They form a plan to retrieve the hurt doctor and Marnie, then make it to the shuttle.  But arriving there, they learn Hadson has betrayed them, as there was no spot on the shuttle for them in the first place.  But just at that moment, Marnie's water breaks.  While the baby brings a brief moment of relief, 

A piece of an orbital tanker comes crashing down, the Swarm being brought on board for study, but as they learn from Bark this went hideously wrong.  Now the only place left they can go is the mass-driver of the Sig refinery.  Even though Hadson's assistant tries to betray them once again, they overcome the odds.  As the Swarm swoops over the refinery in search of the Sig stored there, they escape with a shuttle through the mass-driver, stored in a container.  Walter names the baby Kou as a thanks for them redeeming him, as giant beasts burst from the surface the moment they are about to launch, giving them an escape window and leaving the planet behind.

Well, unfortunatly this series didn't have much going for it.  The story is far from unique, but the fact the sacrifices are telegraphed from miles away and the betrayal's are done by minor side characters, it doesn't really deliver a punch at those moments.  And as I said before, the rather horrible CGI doesn't offer any redeeming factors either.  Oh, and the "horror" factor is totally absent by the way...