"I don't want to die."
Alex the Junkie (Caroline Raynaud)
Alex the Junkie (Caroline Raynaud)
(Spoilers!) The Roswell incident says hello. Project Ithaca uses the classic urban legend — fact? — as the foundation of its narrative, building upon the concept that among the human residents in the town near the crash site, a pregnant woman's foetus was exposed to alien spores, resulting in Sera, the alien-human hybrid played by Taylor Thorne (of Bordello [2023 / trailer]) as a child, and slumming independent-film darling Deragh Campbell (of Possessor [2020 / trailer]) as a young adult. The aliens, it seems, are multi-temporal — as in they jump through time easier than they do through space — so the movie itself also unfolds on multiple temporal levels.
Trailer to
Project Ithaca:![]()
Most of the time, however, the movie transpires deep in the bowels of the alien spacecraft circling Earth, in a dark, dank, and slimy room full of tentacles and leach-like, teethy snake monsters in which our six alien-abducted protagonists awaken, confused, terrified and ignorant to where they are. Some of the six have links — John Brighton (an unflappable, possibly wooden, James Gallanders of Bride of Chucky[1998] and The Skulls II [2002 / trailer]) is a former handler of Sera, fired when he became too emotionally invested in the girl — but the others seem pulled willy-nilly (and "in a flash of light") from their given era, which range from 1968 (John) to 2050 (jailbird Perry Bulmer, played by an excellent Daniel Fathers, of Pontypool[2008], The Void [2018 / trailer], Mute [2018 / trailer] and Punch [2023 / trailer]).
As directed by Nicholas Humphries (whose previous projects, among many, include Trap House [2023 / trailer] and Mermaid's Song [2015 / trailer]) from a script provided by newcomers Anthony Artibello and Kevin C. Bjerkness, Project Ithaca is a confusing but intriguing alien-abduction movie spiced with liberal dashes of horror and some truly wooden acting that mostly overcomes its flaws as it works towards an ending which, depending on how you look it, either drops the balls or is inspired. One thing for sure, neither the characters nor the world truly come out on top at the end. True, all the abductees but one survive and are freed, but that is hardly a happy ending because regardless of their original location in time, they all end up at the same unknown place and time in the final scene (multiple butterfly effects are predetermined).
The gut punch, however, is the major twist at the end — okay, one sees it coming, so the twist is sort of a half-turn — one that supports the argument that humanity, at least in the movie, would have been way better off had the military never begun its machinations of prevention, as the future no longer look rosy for the human race. The resolution also leaves room for a sequel, but the independent feature probably didn't make enough waves to ever warrant one.
The science fiction aspects in Project Ithaca often have an oddly retro feel to them, underscored by the flashback scenes, set in the late 60s, of the military experiments with Sera as a young girl. When exactly the movie is set is up to the viewer to decide: as each main character comes from a different time, the "now" of the movie is basically unknown. And while most of the characters have a "flashback" of sorts in the movie, those involving young Sera and military man John are the most pervasive and narrative-relevant.
In the case of the others, the "flashbacks" are actually memories induced and twisted by the mind-fucking aliens, who use human emotions (above all: fear) as the fuel for their spacecrafts. And thus, in the midst of the different memories — schoolteacher Rhonda Woods (a believable Konima Parkinson-Jones of Freeway Killer [2010 / trailer] and The Silence [2019 / trailer]) at a Christmas with the family; junkie Alex (Caroline Raynaud of The Baker [2022 / trailer] and Flee the Light [2021 / trailer]) on the day that her father kills her mother and rapes her — the aliens reveal and revel in their innate sadism by speaking terrifying verbal gymnastics through the mouths of a memory-based figure present. The abductees are not even safe in their own minds.
While psychological horror does play a role in Project Ithaca, the true horror of the slow-burn movie is that experienced in the slimy, goo- and tentacle-filled, biologically alive holding chamber in which the six are milked for their fear. And if the unpleasant location itself is not already enough of the things nightmares are made of, the movie pulls out the punches towards the end for a prolonged practical-effects scene that is wonderfully horrific...![]()
In other words, Project Ithaca offers more than enough, both as a horror movie and a science-fiction movie, to keep the viewer glued to the chair. Between all the jumping back and forth in time, it does take a while for the what and why of the story to become clear, but then, the somewhat incoherent but mesmerizing narrative could hardly be told temporally progressive. Viewers with patience (or that don't multitask while watching) might find the independent Canadian movie captivating, if somewhat more effective as a horror movie than as a science fiction movie.
