The second film I've seen recently ( after Free Fire ) to curiously include a John Denver musical interlude

Rating: 3/10 (1 June 2017)

I'll * not * type a numbered/ bullet point list as a review for this one, as many others have, because any grade school student can do that. Instead, I'll excessively use parenthetical, run-on sentences to make most of my points about this massively disappointing movie, whose biggest asset is impressive exterior photography in Australia and New Zealand.
Watchable, but routine sci-fi/ horror follows every beat one expects from this type of movie. Its largely predictable plot is hurt further by the fact that even if one cannot see the twists coming, the trailer reveals too much of the film.
Nothing happens naturally, everything feels as though it happens just because the script says it should happen. The two story writers ( Jack Paglen and Michael Green ) worked independently of each other, and two screenwriters ( John Logan and Dante Harper ) all worked separately, independent of each other, which is why their names are all separated by the word " and " , rather than a comma ( as per Writer's Guild regulations ) and they all seemingly hadn't even read what had been written, considering the jarring changes in tone throughout, and some random​ story elements which come from out of nowhere and lead to nothing.
These genius scientists ( on their way to colonise a distant planet ) make the most idiotic mistakes since a 1980s slasher movie ( take a close up look at that moving alien egg, while exploring an uncharted planet with virtually no protective equipment, because nothing bad could possibly happen. ( When they slip on the blood soaked floor, I thought that if they made it in black and white, and added some piano music, it would look like an old short film from the 1920s, where someone slips on a banana peel. That happens not just once, but * twice * , in quick succession ) ) , as they go off course to explore an unknown planet, which ends up being inhabited by another, who has been stranded there for ten hyperbolic years, gone mad from isolation, and basically turned the aliens into biological experiments, because, yeah, sure.
The aliens themselves, are never scare or frightening, they're just gross and blood drenched.
This entire film, while not * bad * , feels like a big budget Alien rip- off, made by a room full of studio executives, rather than filmmakers, and solely to set up the next sequel( s ) , with no point to make of its own.
We even get a pointless, from out of nowhere shower scene slaughter! Again, because yeah, sure we do.