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Film Review

Debug: Hewlett’s gory homegrown sci-fi story never achieves liftoff

Open this photo in gallery:

Adrian Holmes stars as Capra, a junkie-thug and the overseer of the hackers.

Christos Kalohoridis

Brad Wheeler

This article was published more than 5 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current.

Comments
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0 out of 4 stars

Written by
David Hewlett
Directed by
David Hewlett
Starring
Jeananne Goossen, Jason Momoa, Adam Butcher
Genre
Scifi
Classification
14A
Country
Canada
Language
English

Clearly filmed in a zero-gravitas environment, Debug is a Canadian sci-fi gore-fest with a filmic reach that falls short of even its modest budget.

A telegenic young crew of convicted computer hackers is tasked to clean up the computer programs of a deserted space freighter and reboot the ship.

Their overseer is black – this is a racial reversal of chain-gang dramas – but then again the boss is a junkie-thug and the hackers are ecoterrorists, and mostly righteous.

Story continues below advertisement

There's a devilish villain in the circuitry; it's soon clear that the stock characters will die, one by one. (The women have enough time to take off their clothes before meeting their gruesome demises.)

Writer-director David Hewlett probably had visions of a pocket-sized 2001: A Space Odyssey, but instead produces something closer to Cheap Space Nine.

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