It’s 2047. Feel like taking a trip to a spaceship containing a gateway to hell? I don’t, but Neill’s Dr Billy Weir sure does! starts off like countless science-fiction films: a ragtag team of brainiacs is sent on a mission that turns out a little bit spookier than planned. Despite the film’s occasional silliness (the genre calls for suspensions of reality and hokey explanations of physics) this is Neill at his best. He plays a paranoid spacecraft designer, new to the team, who it turns out has created something truly horrific. Brilliant? Yes. Destructive? Oh, absolutely! It fun. Bonus fact: Dr Weir’s jacket sports an Australian flag but with the Aboriginal flag emblem in place of the Union Jack. This was Neill’s request as he believed that’s how the Australian flag should look in the future. He’s a good egg.
