SOLE SURVIVOR (2000) Dir: Mikael Salomon (MINI SERIES)

I first caught this mini series late summer 2001 on VHS, It always alluded me though when I was trying to find a copy of it. Sole Survivor is based on a novel by writer Dean Koontz, who while not being as famous as Stephen King, is one of the luminaries of modern horror literature. Shawn Francis managed to get his grubby mitts on a review copy of Sony's MOD release and gives us the low down after the jump...

Written By Shawn Francis
I remember catching this Dean Koontz adaptation in the tail end of a very bad summer, (September of 2000 is when it aired), which is one reason why I like this flick. It was a moment of respite. It’s a mini-series, two-parts that was aired over two consecutive nights. I recall the second part was delayed due to some sporting event; it ended up airing at eleven that night. I like it so much I recorded both parts on VHS.

Billy Zane plays Joe Carpenter, a reporter, whom a year earlier lost his wife and daughter in a plane crash. As Part One opens we see him torturing himself with their memories by watching home videos of one of his daughter Nina’s birthday. Life has not been kind to Joe since their deaths, he suffers everyday emotionally, and even sought help from a grief counselor. But life is going to get a whole lot more difficult, and interesting, the night he pays a visit to their graves.

He finds a woman taking photos of their gravestones. Rose Tucker is her name and she tells him, “there’s no death. You’ll see. Just like the others.” At the same time a group of “shady government men” show up. Rose takes off. They follow. But Joe’s reporter instincts take over and he snoops around their car.

This is when we are introduced to the stand out actor/character of this mini-series. Victor Yates, played by John C. McGinley, better known as Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs and from another Dean Koontz adaptation, the 1997 mini-series, Intensity, where he played serial killer, Edgler Vess. Both Vess and Yates are basically flip sides of the same coin. As we get to know Yates, who’s real identity we never really learn. Yes, he works for the government, but he’s not FBI, CIA, or even an agent from Department of Agriculture, from what is insinuated is that he’s probably more of a contract government assassin. Someone they send out to “clean things up,” so to speak. And, like his Vess character from Intensity, Yates is very good at what he does, and doesn’t care who he has to kill or hurt in the process to get his point across.

Carpenter eventually learns Rose Tucker was a survivor from that plane crash. Problem is the official word is no one survived it. Rose’s photo is even listed on the NTSB’s website of the victims who were killed. Obviously someone’s mistaken, either that or something really fuckin’ weird is going on. With his reporter instincts unable to let this whole mystery go, he begins digging deeper and visiting some of the relatives of the victims.

Things get a whole lot weirder when one family relates the reluctant suicide of a grandmother and another family isn’t found to be grieving like they naturally should. They’re too happy. But before any answers can be given as to why this should be, these three family members proceed to kill themselves. One upstairs with a gun, another downstairs with a knife and another blows them all up by igniting the gas stove. But not before turning and stating, “Isn’t this cool, Joe?”

Joe barely makes it out alive.

Next on his list is Barbara Christman, the NTSB investigator that was in charge of the crash. She relates even stranger things like the dialogue that went on between the pilot and co-pilot and that several seats were found near the crash that were virtually undamaged. Seats which Joe thinks his wife and daughter were seated in. Christman also relates an ominous encounter she had with Yates in a hotel room. One where she was urged to accept the official cause of the crash and to stop looking any deeper. And to press this point home, Yates tells her if she doesn’t her son and wife will be killed, and to further stress his point he orders his partner to cut off part of one of her fingers.

Meanwhile, Yates and his men are following Joe, trying to make him dead because he’s just learning to goddamn much about things he should be learning about. Christman has pretty much signed her death warrant the moment she begins helping Joe and she tells him as much. Yates confirms this by going to her house and burning it down in preparation for the “ accidental death” he has planned for her.

At the crash site, Yates finds the both of them, and orders his right hand man to try and shoot them from the helicopter they’re in. Her death comes from a gunshot wound by an agent on the ground. Joe heads off to this farm she’s directed him to for this Rose Tucker showed up there after the crash with a child in tow and Joe believes this child was Nina. Part One ends when the farmer’s wife remembers the little girl’s name, and it was indeed, Nina!

For my discussion of Part Two, yes, there will be spoilers, so if you don’t want to know any more about this movie, stop reading! In the second half of this mini-series we learn the Quartermass Institute, of which Rose Tucker was working for (she’s a scientist) had a special project they were working on. Project 99 was supposed to create a new kind of human being. Humans with special powers. Humans that were better than. All the kids had some kind of unique ability but the two standouts were a boy and a girl. All the test subjects were never given names only numbers. The little girl was known as 21-21, and the boy 89-58.

89-58’s ability was akin to remote viewing. He could see objects and places at great distances, not only that he could even crawl inside the minds of anyone in these locations and make them do whatever he wanted. He was eventually used to assassinate key political opponents. 21-21’s power was more problematic. She could heal wounds with a touch and make people “see” there was life beyond death. Her gift could not be weaponized and she was thus scheduled to be terminated. Rose secreted her away, which is how she ended up being on the same plane Joe and his daughter were on.

In this part, Joe also gets to face off with psycho government agent, Yates, not once but twice. The second time becomes Yates’ downfall but not because of anything Joe does, but what remote viewer boy 89-58 does.

Part Two is mostly Joe and 21-21 on the run from Yates, his men, and 89-58 who wants to kill the little for himself.

I did read Dean Koontz’s book and from what I can recall I thought it was fantastic. The differences I can remember is that the Yates character in the mini-series is not in the book. The book’s main antagonist is the remote viewer kid, and I seem to remember a scene where Joe, or some character, is in the woods and 89-58 takes over the mind of various animals to try and kill him, or them. A scene that is not in the mini-series.

After roughly thirteen years, Sole Survivor finally hits DVD through Sony’s MOD program, here in the States. Intensity (1997) came out through this same program a year earlier. As with most if not all of Sony’s MODs you only get the feature, no extras, occasionally a trailer. Sole Survivor is separated into its two parts rather than being integrated into one three-hour movie, which Warner did with the ’79 version of Salem’s Lot. Oddly, instead of having Part One and Part Two listed on the DVD menu, it says Night One and Night Two. I can only assume that’s in reference to when they were aired, at night.

The transfer’s aspect ratio is 1.77:1 and looks pretty good. I didn’t have any kind of problem with it nor the English Dolby Digital Stereo. There are no subtitles.

Basically, the book and the mini-series are about life after death but told through the eyes of science fiction rather than through any kind of religious one. Both are well worth you time.