Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a sci-fi, thriller film from 2016, titled
Domain. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. Various reports bring devastating news to the
world: a powerful new strain of influenza is slowly wiping out humanity, spreading beyond
doctors' abilities to contain it. This could be a civilization-ending event, so the World
Health Organization begins the construction of half a million underground bunkers.
To decide who gets to stay in them, a lottery is organized, and the winners get to survive.
Six years later, these winners are still living in these underground self-sustaining bunkers. There
is one person per bunker, and their only method of communication is a computer that allows them
to video-chat in groups of up to seven people. Their food is provided in the form of a shake
powder full of nutrients, an artificial day/night cycle keeps their sleeping patterns normal, and a
rowing machine serves as both a method to exercise and a way to provide energy to the bunker.
Today, a group of seven refugees that has been keeping each other company for the last few years
is having a disagreement. Orlando has confessed to having been a serial killer before the pandemic,
and the others are disgusted by him, admitting that he's never quite fit in. Instead of feeling
shame though, Orlando keeps making fun of them and taunting them, like reminding Atlanta that
her children are probably dead out there. This definitely crosses a line, so the group leader
Boston proposes to vote Orlando out of the communication group. It's a hard decision
because once you kick someone out you can't add them back later, although Orlando doesn't seem to
mind. Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago vote in favor, but Phoenix refuses to isolate someone like this,
her boyfriend Denver backs her up as usual, and Houston refuses to be the last vote. Sick of
this charade, Orlando asks to be unplugged and continues to taunt them with their dark future,
so Denver gives in to the others' demands and unplugs him. Later at night, Phoenix can't sleep,
so Denver contacts her to have a private chat. She admits she doesn't feel comfortable judging others
for their mistakes, so Denver reminds her that Orlando is still alright in his Florida bunker,
he just can't talk to them. Both of them go back to bed after saying I love you and putting their
hands together on the screen. Eight months later, Phoenix keeps having trouble sleeping because she
dreams about her mother, and Houston's sleep cycle is messed up because his system is malfunctioning.
Everyone is in a bad mood this morning so some arguments erupt, but Atlanta
ignores them in favor of praying, which for once Phoenix decides to join. Then they proceed to
read the daily stats: after checking on their own vitals, they look at the bunker's numbers,
which from the original half-million has gone down to less than four hundred ninety thousand - losing
around six per day. Chicago thinks keeping track of these numbers on the screen is pointless,
and when another argument begins, he interrupts it by playing the bunker's instructional video.
The person teaching them how to use the bunker is Nadine, the original designer, but nobody is
paying attention to her today because they've already watched this video a thousand times.
That night, Phoenix and Denver appear on each other's screens next to the beds and
practice using their real names instead of their location before going to sleep.
The next morning, everyone's stats screens begin malfunctioning before they completely shut down.
Houston's sleep cycle program is glitching as well, and Phoenix wonders if they broke
something when they banned Orlando. The others don't agree they should bring him back,
and Denver doesn't think he can even do that anyway, so Phoenix gets upset because he won't
even try and decides to ignore her friends for now. Worried, Denver contacts her privately and
reminds her that he only wants to help, so Phoenix finally opens up and tells him her
story. Her mother died way before the pandemic arrive, and Phoenix was in prison when she won
the lottery. She never met her dad because he died when she was young, so her mother
raised her alone, but that also meant Phoenix didn't see her much because she had to work.
As a lonely teenager, Phoenix started to hang out with a bad crowd and got into illegal substances,
which made her lie and steal a lot. She ran away when she was seventeen and returned after ODing,
but she never stopped. One night she was feeling intoxicated and paranoid,
thinking her mother had stolen her stash, so she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and killed her,
only to later find her stash in her room where she left it. Now Denver understands why Phoenix
has never been comfortable with banning Orlando, even if he thinks their crimes aren't on the same
level at all. To help her feel better, he decides to start working on trying to lift
the ban. It takes him a good amount of hours and it's late at night when he finally makes it work,
but when he turns Orlando's feed on again, they find his bunker empty. They tell the others
about it, and Boston gets angry that Denver and Phoenix acted behind their backs. Houston begins
irrationally freaking out, thinking Orlando may be the one messing with his sleep cycle,
but Phoenix thinks perhaps Orlando just tried to escape. Atlanta points out the doors are locked,
but the truth is, none of them ever even tried the doors since they arrived at the bunkers.
Phoenix thinks of trying to open her own door, but the others remind her it would be a bad idea
because it could allow the virus to get inside. Sometime later, Phoenix and Boston have a private
conversation about the whole deal. Phoenix thinks it was about time that things changed
regarding the leadership of the group, and Boston thinks every day she sounds more like Denver,
who he thinks is a creep. Denver reminds Boston of his dad, the kind of guy that looks friendly
on the outside but it's actually all fake to hide the fact he could become a monster when he snaps.
Phoenix thinks he's exaggerating, and she's sure she knows Denver well enough to tell he's a good
person. However, after the conversation is over, she still feels a bit insecure,
so she replays a few old videos of her and Denver having a good time together. Rewatching these
private videos makes Phoenix wonder if Orlando had some recordings of his own too, so she asks Denver
to try to access them. Denver does so, and the first few logs he finds are normal, just Orlando
going through his daily routine. The last one though, is pretty chilling: Orlando is exercising,
but suddenly the screen is filled with static and Orlando can be heard screaming "leave me alone!".
When the static goes away and his bunker appears again, the place is empty and the
door is open. The video is five hours long, so Denver fast-forwards to the end only to watch
the door get closed. When they tell the others about this, a paranoid Houston begins rambling
about Orlando being a mastermind that sent them to the bunkers while lying about the pandemic.
Boston considers the possibility of the video being fake, which doesn't make sense,
so while everyone argues, Phoenix proposes they should try to escape because obviously the bunkers
aren't safe anymore. As always, Boston wants them to vote on it, but Houston isn't sane so Atlanta
thinks this isn't the time to make any decisions. Later that night, Phoenix begins examining every
corner of the bunker more closely and finds a small panel on the wall that she tries to remove.
Her work is suddenly interrupted by the computer showing everyone that Houston is hitting his head
against the wall over and over, and then he starts laughing maniacally as he spreads the blood around
with his hand. When he finally loses his mind in the middle of the room, someone enters the bunker
right before the screen is filled with static, only for a few seconds later for the feed to
return to normal and show this bunker is now also empty. Phoenix runs to the door to see if there's
anyone outside but finds nothing, and Boston is forced to admit they aren't safe anymore. After
sharing her worries with Denver, Phoenix goes to sleep, only to hear someone enter her bunker.
Thankfully it all turns out to be a dream, and when she wakes up, she finds a rat on her bed.
Apparently, the little guy got inside by pushing the panel she had loosened up yesterday, so
Phoenix decides to check it out. The panel itself says "emergency vent", and when she puts her hand
inside the hole, she finds nothing. The others check their walls and find the same panel with
the same nothingness behind it, which doesn't make sense because they're supposed to be underground.
Yet again, another argument begins. Phoenix takes over the leadership of the group and
asks Denver to use the computer to see if he can contact other survivors while the rest of
them begin examining the bunker more closely to see if they can find any possible exit points.
Chicago however, thinks they should do nothing and wait it out, so he doesn't join the search.
Nobody can find any clues, so Atlanta decides to take the risk and break the pipe that provides the
shake powder to see where it leads. Just like it happened with the panel though,
she finds absolutely nothing behind the hole on the wall: just a huge empty space. At that moment,
her screen begins filling with static as someone enters her bunker, and the same thing happens:
after a few seconds, the screen returns to normal and Atlanta is gone. Not being able to take this
anymore, Chicago takes his blanket away, revealing all the shake powder he's been hiding in order to
starve himself. Then he hangs the blanket on a pipe and uses it to end things for himself,
leaving only Phoenix, Denver and Boston left. After taking a moment to put themselves together,
Denver shares what he's found while looking around in the system. He's managed to access other
people's logs outside their group, although it's just video with no audio. Most of them seem to be
fine, but there is also a lot of death from people who like Chicago couldn't take the confinement
anymore. The most shocking news however, is the fact Denver only could find one thousand feeds,
not five hundred thousand, which means there are only one thousand bunkers and they've been
lied to. Phoenix decides she wants to get out of there on her own terms instead of being abducted,
and she has an idea: they can use the broken panels to cut the door wires,
even if this could possibly leave them without food and oxygen. After she and Denver agree on
a place to meet if they manage to get out, Boston asks for one last vote for the sake of tradition.
Now they're ready, the three of them cut the wires, simultaneously activating an alarm
but also getting to open the doors. The stairs outside take you nowhere, and for a moment they
think they're trapped until they realize the wall with the stairs is also a door. When they open it,
they come out into the same corridor, because they've been inside the same building all along.
After Phoenix and Denver kiss for the first time, the trio starts investigating the place,
discovering each door takes them to the different bunkers, which have always been next to each
other. Eventually, they find a door that takes them to the roof of the building, and there they
discover they're in a city that is functioning normally as if a pandemic had never happened.
There are also two guards blocking the only exit, so Boston distracts them to give his
friends a chance to escape. Phoenix wants answers though, so she and Denver enter a different part
of the building filled with offices. When they find one that has a bunch of paperwork in it,
Phoenix begins looking through it, and Denver finds a board with their group's pictures,
showing them as convicts. That's how they're suddenly found by Nadine, who points a gun
at them to keep them under control because she knows Denver is extremely dangerous.
Phoenix demands an explanation, so Nadine admits this is an experiment and they're still in prison.
The pandemic had been a lie, the news coverage they saw on tv was paid actors,
and they moved the prisoners from their jails to the bunkers by slipping sedatives into their food.
The reason why they've been removing the people from their bunkers is that
they're shutting down the experiment, a consequence of the video showing the
group banning Orlando getting leaked on the internet and reaching the national news.
People were furious that these prisoners have been treated so nicely and with so much freedom,
so the government heard their pleas and now soon everyone will be sent back to regular prison.
Denver begins insulting Nadine for her lies, and Nadine in turn calls him her one mistake.
Each prisoner was chosen according to an evaluation program that indicated it would
be unlikely for them to reveal their stories, so Nadine could study how each of them created
new identities to fit into the assigned group. Phoenix wants to know what her friends really are,
so Nadine begins explaining: Orlando was a career criminal, in and out of prison all his life,
and he had already confessed his murders. Houston was in a gang and responsible for twenty murders.
Atlanta suffered postpartum depression and she drowned her daughters. Chicago was an addict and
a streetworker, he murdered many of his clients to rob them. Boston robbed a bank with his two
brothers, then murdered both to keep all the cash for himself. Lastly, Denver stalked and
killed eleven women that he met on dating websites. Phoenix is disgusted by all this,
but Nadine insists she did a good thing by giving them a better life than prison and a chance to put
their pasts behind them, creating something new. Suddenly, more guards arrive and tase them both,
so Phoenix wakes up later in her bunker. A mysterious man approaches her while she's in bed,
but then Phoenix wakes up, realizing she was dreaming. Now she and Denver find themselves
handcuffed to a couple of chairs, so they begin discussing what happened. Phoenix can't believe
she trusted Denver, but he assures her he does love her, the same way he loved the women he
killed. He's been suspicious of the experiment since she confessed her crime - together with
Orland's confession and his own history, it hadn't been hard for Denver to put two and two together.
He didn't say anything because he found it fun and fascinating to watch it all play out,
so Phoenix calls him a sociopath, which Denver agrees with. Afterward, the guards take them back
to the corridor, where the rest of his group is also waiting in front of their respective bunkers.
Orlando begins calling out their hypocrisy as soon as he sees them, then he hits the guard behind him
to steal his weapon. Unfortunately, this only causes the other guards to shoot in defense
and kill him. Then, the remaining five from the original group are sent back to their bunkers,
where they'll have to wait until arrangements are made to be sent back to their respective prisons.
Chicago's body is taken away and all his stuff is trashed, but Phoenix finds two things in her room:
the picture of her mother and the body of the dead rat.