Posted : 6 years ago on 3 May 2018 08:52
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.
Despite its intriguing sci-fi premise and some excellent moments (like the bear scene), overall it's kind of dry and it comes off as a bit pretentious: it's clearly trying to make us think, but not about subjects that I'm particularly interested in pondering.
While the good elements – the overall creativity and the superficially exciting scenes – were strong enough that I quite enjoyed it overall, there are two things severely holding it back for me: the characters are boring as hell, and the CGI looks like it's straight out of a video game. Now, to be fair, in the case of the latter, that might have been a budget issue, but it still ruins the illusion.
I prefer writer/director Alex Garland's previous effort, Ex Machina, by far.
My rating: 65%
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Posted : 6 years, 1 month ago on 26 March 2018 09:52
Since I really loved 'Ex-Machina', I was really eager to see Alex Garland's 2nd directing effort and it was definitely one of the my highest priorities for 2018. On top of that, it was suddenly available on Netflix which was a really nice surprise. Well, eventually, even though it turned out to be pretty good, I can't say I was really blown away though. The big difference between this movie and 'Ex-Machina' was that 'Ex-Machina' was one of the most original science-fiction features I have seen in a very long time but this movie was however nothing really groundbreaking. Indeed, this concept has been done so many times before, even recently with 'Arrival' and Garland didn't provide anything really new to the genre. Furthermore, I didn't really get the motivations of the characters. I mean, did it really make sense to keep on going like this? The best explanation they could give us was that 'they were all damaged goods' but it was rather weak. Furthermore, even though it was interesting that they chose an all female crew, it didn't make sense either to send a group of scientists with apparently only some basic weapon training in such an unknown and possibly dangerous area. Anyway, the whole thing still worked for me thanks to a very nice mood. Indeed, it was visually really neat and the cast, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh, delivered some solid performances. To conclude, even though it wasn't really another home-run for Alex Garland, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.
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Posted : 6 years, 2 months ago on 26 February 2018 12:03
A great sci-fi story that doesn't spell everything out. It has a gentle horror feeling throughout, where the antagonist isn't a villain, or even thinking being, perhaps. In fact, no malicious intent, just matter-of-fact is fresh. Weird and enjoyable, I will probably want to go see this one again. 8/10
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