Crew
Director – Justin Price, Producers – Deanna Grace Congo, Khu, Lisa May & Justin Price, Photography – Khu, Music – Julian Beeston, Makeup Effects – Joe Castro. Production Company – Pikchure Zero Entertainment.
Cast
Franziska Schissler (Fenix), Alexander Kane (York), Jason Skeen (Otto), Khu (Zan), Carl Bailey (Thane), Alex Guiffreda (Jax), Leonard Jackson (Evo), Angelic Granger (Galen), Robert Ross (The Dawnseeker)
Plot
The year 2298. Fenix is one of a group of new recruits chosen for a mission to the planet Omia Prime. They are to hunt the deadly creature known as The Dawnseeker, which contains a much sought after mineral. Something goes wrong and the shuttle they are aboard crashes. The recruits come together on the surface and meet other soldiers. However, they are now being hunted by The Dawnseeker.
Justin Price, also credited as Tristan Price, is a low-budget director/producer who has made a prolific output in the 2010s. Price has directed a number of genre films that include Daddy’s Home (2010), The Cloth (2013), Dark Moon Rising (2015), Forsaken (2016), Snare (2016), Alien: Reign of Man (2017), The Elf (2017), The 13th Friday (2017), The Mummy Rebirth (2019) and Wrong Place, Wrong Time (2021). He has also produced Elves (2018) and Abominable (2020).
The Dawnseeker is a film that is all over the place. There is a prologue set on the Earth where we see Franziska Schissler pass through the mean streets of a standard dark future. For no apparent reason, the film then jumps forward fifty years to where Franziska (still the same age) is now serving in some type of military detachment. They are given the assignment of hunting The Dawnseeker – what The Dawnseeker is is never made clear; what we see appears to be some type of alien. Moreover, while they are told they are to hunt it in search of some mineral, in actuality it spends most of the film hunting them.
The bulk of the film takes place on the planet Omia Prime after the shuttle has crashed and The Dawnseeker been released. There are hints that the shuttle crash may have not been an accident and that Franziska Schissler may even be responsible (for reasons that have something to do with her background, which is implied is one of the elites on Earth, or Beta 4 as it is now called). These are more plot strands but all of these are just left hanging in the wind.
The scenes with the survivors from the shuttle and another military troupe they encounter being hunted by The Dawnseeker comprise the bulk of the plot. Here the film has borrowed the essentials of Predator (1987), something that is particularly evident when it comes to the design of the creature. The Dawnseeker even has a nifty trick that the Predator does not – it impales victims and then lifts them up above its head at arm’s length.
As low-budget SF films go, this does okay. There is a moderate conviction to the costumes and props, the cast all give professional performances. On the other hand, there seems a lot missing in the script department, possibly another whole part of the film that was cut or else details that were left for a sequel. Franziska Schissler’s background is hinted at but nothing is ever made of it. We are not exactly sure what the intergalactic situation is, why the need to journey to this planet and hunt The Dawnseeker, what The Dawnseeker even is, or who the rebel factions are. It is a script that seems to raise more questions about what is going on than it ever answers any of them. Even the end of the film is frustratingly abrupt one where Franziska Schissler and Khu make it to the ship and set to take before … something happens and we just fade to black.
Trailer here