New this week on DVD and BluRay from Microsoft Studios!

HALO: NIGHTFALL Series (2014)

Directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
Written by Paul T. Scheuring
Starring Steven Waddington, Siennah Buck, Mike Colter, Christian Contreras, Alexander Bhat, Luke Neal, Jonathan Harden, Sarah Armstrong, Shaun Blaney, Katherine Fitzpatrick, Eleanor Williams, Christina Chong, Enda Oates, Jennie Gruner, Rob Pavey, Dermott Hickson, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Alexis Rodney, Taylor Topal
Reviewed by Mighty Mouth

Halo, Halo! Wherefore art thou Halo?

What is it about adapting a video game into a feature film that is so puzzling? With such entertaining and marketable source material you would think getting it right would be a snap. Yet gamers and film goers alike are more often subjected to atrocities like Doom and Super Mario Brothers.

Enter the latest attempt merging feature films and video games “Halo: Nightfall.” Set between the events of Halo 4 and 5, NIGHTFALL follows ONI agent Jameson Locke (Mike Colter), and his squad of commandos investigating terrorist chatter on the distant colony world, Sedra. After a biological attack threatens the populace, Locke and his team of agents are forced to work with a local grunt commander Colonel Aiken (Steven Waddington), a man with a deep-seeded mistrust of ONI. The investigation brings the two uneasy teams to a section of the destroyed Halo ring. Once there both teams are pitted in an encounter that forces them to choose between their loyalties and their very lives.

That’s sounds gripping enough, right? Well it really isn’t.

The problems with this feature rest not in the level of production or the casts acting. Visually speaking it looks pretty damn good and the mostly unknown actors do a decent job with what they are given to work with. The biggest issue for me is the absence of just about everything I love about Halo. What could have been an ambitious updated version of ALIENS, feels more comparable to PITCH BLACK; but without the originality.

High-tech firefights with alien enemies like the Covenant (or even the Flood) are exchanged for a survival tale about a team of soldiers trying to keep their shit together as they are pursued by a mass of hunter worm creatures, the Lekgolo. Okay, not what one would typically expect in a Halo film but there’s still all those cool Halo weapons and technology to showcase, right? Yeah about that… don’t expect to see the agents make much use of their awesome technology and firepower either; a plot device renders their Weapons and tech effectively useless for most of the film.

Even with respectable cinematography and very polished effects, the more I watched, the more I longed for anything that felt even remotely similar to awesomeness one experiences when you take up your Xbox controller and immerse yourself in the game. But hey, if the notion of watching a movie set in the Halo universe stripped of the essentials that make Halo one the greatest video game franchises of our time, then give it a shot. HALO: NIGHTFALL just may entertain you… me, not so much.