This film that looks at life in the frontier of space is painfully frustrating.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 10, 2023

Settlers leaves far too many questions unanswered. Ultimately making for a frustrating narrative experience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Wyatt Rockefeller’s slow-burn sci-fi Western will keep you on your toes.

| Oct 24, 2022

The characters are carefully constructed to support this bleak vision, with the help of excellent performances all around.

| Oct 24, 2022

It's a promising start as a film debut for Rockefeller.

| Oct 24, 2022

A deeply unsettling, discomfiting exploration of a simple, if still provocative, thesis.

| Oct 18, 2022

Within the 103 minute runtime, Settlers might not be perfect storytelling, but Rockefeller’s first foray into feature length narrative filmmaking delivers on many respectable fronts.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2022

Settlers can be an almost excessively unpleasant pandemic-inspired allegory, but a remarkably honest one.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2022

As “Settlers” eases from a simmer to a boil the story’s bleakness becomes more evident. It feeds into the film’s idea that no matter where we go, we can never escape the ugly side of human nature.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Ending on a note that leaves the audience wanting more is a good thing, to be sure, but ending on a note that leaves the audience feeling unfulfilled is not, and despite its strong craft, Settlers is firmly in the latter camp.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 10, 2022

It is a watchable film, but it begs for patience - not just for the plot but for its writer/director's inexperience.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 24, 2021

It's a film without villains, only deluded or deceptive men, and it ends in a ferocious stalemate that counters the Biblical view of a man's duty to settle and dominate a bleak land.

| Aug 13, 2021

It's a sombre affair that even a helpful WALL-E-type droid can't lighten, but the mystery is teased out enticingly thanks to ambient mood music from Nitin Sawhney.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2021

[It] seems like it was an idea that was originally conceived as a short film, but somehow it got stretched into dull junk that trudges to an unsurprising and lackluster end ... There are plenty of better and more memorable movies about life on Mars.

| Aug 1, 2021

When it comes to envisioning and creating a tangible world, Setters is terrifically seducive.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 30, 2021

There is life on Mars and it's a godawful small affair, according to this determinedly sombre sci-fi film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 30, 2021

Settlers may well appeal to those who prefer their science fiction a bit more grounded and thoughtful but the film's glacial pace and lack of momentum suck the life out of it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 30, 2021

Everything feels derivative and there's no real narrative heft to cling on to.

| Jul 30, 2021

Above all, what sets this production apart from the rest is its unflinchingly honest and bleak view of the human condition.

| Jul 29, 2021

Settlers isn't perfect: some of the storytelling beats aren't hit as clearly as they could have been. But it's a quietly impressive piece of work.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 28, 2021