They Were Eleven Review

Engaging
As part of the Reverse Thieves’ Secret Santa Project; for which I am extremely late; I was planning to review The Irresponsible Captain Tylor. I decided to watch a movie called They Were Eleven instead since it wasn't really on my radar and that made me curious. I have to say that I do not regret making that decision.

They Were Eleven is a sci-fi mystery thriller. In the future their is a elite school called the Cosmo Academy. There students from all over the galaxy compete to become students. During the final portion of the exam ten students, including our hero Tada, are sent to a abandoned space ship. Problems arise immediately when they arrive and discover that there are eleven people on the ship rather than the ten it was supposed to have.

They were sent to the ship with one goal, to survive for such and such. But with this mysterious extra member everyone gets nervous. They have the option to bail out of the exam at anytime but if they did that all of them would fail the entrance exam. Once they reach this point the group realize that their only choice is to try and work together. They all want to pass the entrance exam and if they were to give up due to their fears none of them would be able to get in.


Distrust plays a very important role in the story. As time passes you can see that everyone is slowly growing more and more paranoid. It is thankfully a very subtle change that is only brought to a head by some life threatening issues. Watching these people desperately try to work together while suspecting each other of being the eleventh man is fascinating.

Something that I found disappointing in the movie was that the cast isn’t fleshed out as much as I would have liked. Everyone is introduced in the beginning and seem to be quite diverse. Thing is only about half of the eleven are truly fleshed out. The other half seem to have been brushed to the side. Luckily the ones that they do flesh out actually become very interesting. The story has fun with the fact that the characters are from all over the galaxy and uses that to its advantage.


The film takes its time to explain to you just what had been going on as it comes to a close. It tries to make it feel like the hints are there in the film to allow you to figure out who it is on your own but I personally feel that it was a bit of a stretch. Once they are shown to you it makes sense but they are things so to the side that it feels like the average person would never figure it out without it being pointed out to them. It was quite enjoyable though and I hope more people check it out.