This film is the proof that you can make a good SF film without necessarily having a big budget.For those who makes critics, it is interesting to notice how many of them tend to forget that this was not a big blockbuster but a small film with only a 8-million budget.Some may find it incomplete, not all responses are given to us, not all mysteries solved, but I think it is part of its charm.Still, I will agree with many that the end, interesting as it was, could have benefited from.. I don't know, a bit more time passed on it, a bit more finishing, a bit more polishing.

Smoke, sit back and hold on for this ride. If you can figure out all of the hidden meanings in this movie you can't help to experience anything but greatness. Pure good and pure evil struggling against each other until an ending that left me awestruck, the 2 powers coming together in unison to form Earth. If you are not one quick to judge, willing to watch a few times in order to understand and open your mind, you will see. I believe that these days too many people don't question and have lost open mindedness and the herb enables you to release and free your mind in order to understand something that is on a higher plane. This film is nothing less than pure brilliance for those that can see.

This is most interesting movie. Since the acting is so fine I didn't have to pay attention to it and the visual aspect of the film is goddamn gorgeous, I'll move to the focus point of the film which is clearly missed for many individuals.This is a story which has been told times and times again. It's stated right in the start of the movie and it refers to the journey within. That means it is metaphoric representation of one's struggle inside his psyche, against his own sources of suffering and discomfort. But, for a change, this ain't done in the style of the Joseph Campbell's monomyth. It is done in the old good sense of psychoanalytic representation. It is supremely obvious if the viewer has done the process - not the analysis, necessarily, but struggled with the forces within. Let me explain this a bit.The prisoners, which are named among clearly simplified figures which clarify their status in the set of unconscious (ie. repressed) forces - or 'characters'. These are the needs and wants people generally don't want to admit in them, as to include them to your own ego-view of yourself: for example, the Buddha who wants to thinks he is helping people when hurting them for his own pleasure. Or the little Caesar, who is totally absorbed in having control over others and gets his pleasure in subjugating them. (i have only 1.000 words so cutting the list here, you can spot the rest yourself) Now the protagonist isn't the analyst - the healer as someone other person - but he is the manifestation of that will of one's that is set on the move when one is going after his "unconscious". It is the required agent that is ready to take the heat without being burned - and even when the forces overpower him, he (the will to go for it to the end) is able to restore himself. Ie. after defeat one cannot surrender but keep on going. It represents also the aspect of psychic/spiritual 'enlightenment' where one has to be willing to die, in a sense, to be able to reborn as something other than were before.The nanobots, which seem to be about to kill the person who is infected, represent the climax of the process: one is in horrible pains before he is finally able to let go of the alien thing - alien force - inside him that is tainting his soul. Alien in the sense of foreign for oneself, not E.T. So, our hero is able to see through the surface, through the facade of these suffering prisoners, straight 'into their hearts' and spot the dark thing that haunts them. And take it into himself, eat it up. That is: liberate the forces the character represents so that they are no longer fixated but are part and able to serve the whole - not just pursuing their own 'pleasure in pain' without any concern about what it means to other( interest)s. The prison is the unconscious, prisoners are habitats of it, and the doctors who are 'in control' are the ego. And sleeping gas is their only tool..One who listens is the one who understands what is going on, ie. Persephone. She who lives part of her time in the underworld. "The door should have opened and left open years ago", she says. The gap - the blockade, the barricade - between ego and the unconscious. The new nurse and Persephone can represent both the biological and psychoanalytical perspectives, but also one's own stance towards problems: to medicate it away or to figure it out.Attila is the side of us which is willing to give up anything and everything but the suffering which is so dear to us. This is the pilot of the "In Therapy" who in the end kills himself rather than confront himself and what he is and what he has done.The whole complex is in orbit of burning magma, that is macrocosmic metaphor for being stuck and bound to something which you can't go near but which you can't abandon, either. That is, the cause of our suffering. Everyone has his/her own, and to be set free is to subjectify it. Become it, and thus absorb it's power over oneself.

First, a WARNING: the storyline on D01's main page is NOT to be taken at face-value. It's not to be taken at ass-value, not back-value, and I'd recommend against it being taken at breast-value too. It is not to be taken at any value: it's utter drivel, written by someone who either hadn't seen the movie or was high on Amazonian mushrooms while watching it. In this ludicrous "summary", there is talk of "an alien force", "a power that infects (everyone)", "a violent rebellion" and ends with some gobbledygook about everyone having to "confront their own dragon". None of this is true: 1) aliens are never even hinted at, 2) the stranger's power does not infect but actually does the opposite – heal, 3) there is no rebellion except a ship-sabotage perpetrated by one prisoner, 4) and there is certainly no "dragon" i.e. "inner demon" to be confronted by each character; this isn't a wrist-slitting Bergman drama. Appropriately enough, this utterly misleading and fallacious storyline is written by "Anonymous". I'd hide my name too if I'd written such piffle.D01 is too convoluted, highly confusing, and plot-hole-ridden, but also interesting, unusual, visually appealing, and fun. The deciding factor whether one finds this to be a good film or not is whether one considers the positives heavy enough to outweigh the negatives. I would say that they do, though not by a wide margin.The first plot-device that is highly problematic is that Charon (the space-station's chief) actually throws an advanced computer into the hands of a psychopathic suicidal nutcase, the reason being that Attila is a "computer whiz" hence can obtain information for him. Sillier still, Charon is the boss of a psychiatric unit – with Attila being a criminally insane patient of his - so for Charon to make such a crass blunder makes no sense on any level. Are we to believe that this advanced distant future is run by utter idiots? If the bosses are this daft, then how dim must the lower-level employees at such institutions be? Nevertheless, even though this kind of nonsense would normally annoy me greatly, in D01 it didn't bother me much.Another problem is Cesar's so-called "sacrifice". Are we to believe that he saved the space-station? How?! We see him exiting the boiling-hot water, covered in third-degree burns and from what I could see he did not manage to enter any code need to save the station. In fact, all he did was scream in agony and fumble on the floor for a bit. Bad direction, clumsy editing, or did I miss something?Another example of flawed directing – in an otherwise well-directed movie, from a technical standpoint – was not showing the demise of the Asian chick and Lazarus in more detail. Their death, which I consider a relevant enough event in the story, is just briefly skimmed over in a 10-second sequence during which the two of them didn't even show terror or fear as they approached the planet's atmosphere. The ship's explosion is seen from a distance: hardly the proper way to present the downfall of the film's most evil two characters. It's this kind of lack of paying attention to detail that enables American cinema to still be one step ahead of the Europeans. American movies may have as many dumb plot-twists as the French ones, but at least when it comes to editing and direction there is generally no confusion as to what is going on – as dumb as those goings-on may sometimes be.The movie's main problem, however, is the confusing, inconclusive, bizarre ending. "His destiny could only be fulfilled here, at the threshold of Hell," says the elderly bald female, in one of her many bouts of half-useless narration. Next up: St. George actually terraforms the planet Dante. Why? This is one helluva (n.p.i.) ending, which fails to connect to previous events in any way. It's not as if the story had been revolving up to that point around mankind searching for new pastures - hence terraforming as the number one priority; nothing of the sort. If that had been the case, then St. George's last act would have made sense. The terraforming of Dante is so far-removed from what the previous 80 minutes were about that the viewer doesn't even have a lead: not even a vague hint as to what all of this might be about. There isn't even room for speculation, unless you consider totally wild guessing as a valid way to go about finding an answer to this insolvable riddle. One can theorize all one wants, but this movie doesn't have a point to make. It's just there, pretending as if it had a point.The fact that St. George's background and origin aren't an iota clearer by the movie's end is something that I see as more of a cop-out ending than a brilliant, vague mystery to be solved by the viewer's imagination. To solve a mystery with these many unknowns, one needs to be high on South American mushrooms (like Mr. Anonymous). Any less imagination than those plants bring simply wouldn't be enough. It is a pity that this script, which had real potential, wasn't fixed i.e. script-doctored by an experienced and intelligent writer. The story has a mysterious introduction, an interesting (if flawed) development, but no valid conclusion whatsoever.Apparently, there were all sorts of budget problems during the making of D01, but I simply don't care. As a viewer – and not a film historian – I only judge the film by what I see on the screen i.e. the end-product. Somebody here wrote that D01 is one big metaphor. Naturally, this mushroom-sucking person didn't care to tell us what exactly this grand metaphor might be, because in his words: "I don't want to spoil the movie for you". Another cop-out.