Film Review

Settlers (2021)

A family struggles to protect its homestead on Mars from aggressive strangers.

Described by many as a western on Mars, the impressive feature debut of Wyatt Rockefeller certainly has traits of that genre and displays them quite self-consciously, but it’s far more than just a homesteader movie transferred to another planet. It could equally be described as an end-of-the-world film, as a lifeboat film in which ill-matched survivors of a calamity must get along, or just as a drama which happens to have an extraterrestrial setting… but which, with little modification, could take place on Earth as easily as Mars.

The Mars where it’s set (at some unspecified point in the apparently not too distant future) appears to have a breathable atmosphere — something that’ll be explained later in one of several well-timed surprises — but still doesn’t seem a terribly attractive place to live. There are no sleek, high-tech cities populated by androids and holograms and flying cars. Instead, Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), and their young daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince) eke out a living on their dusty farm, overshadowed by vast…