Who payed the critics

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Good concept, poorly executed.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Ah fan films. With the rise of crowdfunding, affordable high quality cameras and the ability to create CGI effects on one's own computer (or to find someone else who could do it) the last decade or so has seen the rise of this genre of fan works. Perhaps the most notable franchise to have seen this proliferation is Star Trek which was essentially being kept alive by fan films after Enterprise finished its TV run and in-between entries in the rebooted film series. While things like New Voyages and indeed Star Trek Continues have been doing excellent recreations and pastiches of the Original Series, they seemed to really be going where that series had gone before though they got better over time. What I suppose I really craved as a life long Trekkie was for the Trek universe to be expanded upon, not just recreated in all of its original glory. Hence why I found Star Trek: Horizon so intriguing when I stumbled back across it recently having heard of it some months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.Horizon is set during the Romulan War, a much talked about piece of Trek's history that has never been explored on-screen. Set not long after the TV series Enterprise finished, the fan film focuses on the NX-01's sister ship the Discovery in the midst of that conflict. The ship and her crew led by Captain Hawke, after surviving a battle in the film's opening minutes, are sent on a mission to take out a new Romulan weapon that could turn the tide of the war. Their mission leads the crew, which also includes a Romulan defector, to a bigger threat to the Coalition of Planets and the future of Earth.Being a fan of Enterprise (that ill-regarded prequel series filled with great ideas but which took four years to find its feet and lost its audience along the way), the idea of a fan film set during its era and the Romulan War appealed to me. Tommy Kraft, the film's writer/director, has created a love letter to that series in every way possible in creating this movie length spin-off of Enterprise dealing not just with the Romulan War but tying up a lose end or two from that series as well. If you're aware of that series and some of its bigger plot lines, there's plenty to enjoy here plot wise as Kraft creates a compelling story. The dialogue, which can often be tricky for fan films, is good most of the time (though a couple of times it gets a bit too involved in technobabble). It's a prime example of good fan film writing.Horizon is also visually impressive, something even more surprising given its budget of about $22,000. The film is a a mix between Enterprise and the reboot films with the costumes and sets of the former being central to the film (and recreated spectacularly) while the cinematography and overall visual style of Horizon draw heavily from the reboots. Indeed there's a sequence involving Hawke and the villain's eventual villain that owes more than a small debt to the mind-meld sequence form the 2009 film. That's not all though.Where the film is most impressive is in its effects. The ship exteriors and the battle sequences are top-notch and might well be the best I've seen in any of the fan productions I've watched to date with the film's opening fifteen to twenty minutes especially being a visual feast. Where the visuals are perhaps less impressive is in the film's sometimes over-reliance on green screen which can become obvious at times as the film was shot almost entirely that way. That being said, those moments are few and far between and the film's visuals are amongst its strongest selling points. Indeed, Horizon is even more impressive by that small budget. Despite that small budget, it's an impressive effort which puts many bigger budgeted films to shame. For a fraction of the budget of a SyFy, the film looks and flows far better than many of those films or their straight to DVD counterparts. It's a sign of what low- budget genre films that can do and I find myself hoping that Kraft goes on to future projects. For now though, if you're a Trekkie look this up and give a watch.

@@@ What a great film!, well done everyone who took part in making it, thank you, brilliant! @@@ I know its a fan film, but its up there with some of the best Original Star Trek productions... the story is good and special effects are awesome.On a down side (not mentioning names) but one of the actors was a bit wooden for me... but all in all the casts acting abilities was excellent. I especially like the captain, who was sincere, grounded.Id love to see more of these if thats possible. Expand on the their journey. There's a whole chapter missing about the temporal cold war that needs expanding on and explained.If there's more funds available - please make another one. All the best.

This a non-profit movie made through a Kickstarter campaign, and does specifically NOT include any actors from the commercial Star Trek movies or series.Done with a budget of only $22.600 (minus the Kickstarter share) this movie makes a good job at closing out the story threads left hanging after the cancellation of the TV-series Enterprise in 2005. The story and writing is quite good and the acting ranges from sufficient to good. The special effects, sound and music is of commercial quality. If you cannot tolerate the use of "lense flares" and "soft-focus haze" you might be a bit irritated due to its frequent use, though.In contrast to some other fan films they took the time to edit the whole movie together properly (looking at you "Renegades"). I could only find one or two occurrences where they could have fit the pieces better together, and this wasn't due to "missing scenes" - but rather they unnecessarily repeated some information.I give the movie 8/10.

Filled with errors and stilted dialogue, this effort by fans is laudable in its vision. But shaky cam and haze doesn't a good film make.Star Trek: Horizon lacks the grandeur of the feature films: there is no grand stage and Shakespeare feel. What made ST: TWOK great isn't here. There isn't a cracked mirror to see ourselves make things worse: there are ill-fitting uniforms, wooden performances and a very weak enemy. The Romulan Admiral shows how a twenty-something might react to adversity, and probably because the actor playing him is still in his teens.Here's an example of poor writing: Captain Whatsisname orders the crew to abandon ship. But of course, no one does.The ship is out of the fracas: shaky cam is still shivering, swaying and generally producing mal-de-mer.The film would have been better to curb the enthusiasm, spend a little more time on plot, story and dialogue. Who's at fault? The director of course. It *looks* OK on the surface mostly. The CGI effects are compelling, the sets look good, the sound is mostly good. But there is no reason to go beyond the first forty minutes.Lucky for us it's a freebie.