Nope

Rating: 5/10 (4 March 2018)

Yeah this one wasn't working for me, dawg.
It's been a while since I found myself at such a disconnect between the public and critical view of a movie and my own interpretation. Not since Dunkirk I think.
Either way much like that one I can see why people liked this movie and I don't have any issue with the fact people do, it just didn't work for me. There's no real advantage to being the guy who doesn't like the beloved movie and I'm not really in the mood to go into laborious detail to explain why I DON'T like something, hence why most of my detailed reviews are positive as well as most of my reviews in general. I don't want to do this review at all and the least effort I put into it, the better honestly. So I'm just going to do this review in a pros/cons list format.
Things I liked about the movie:

The environmental effects are really nice.

Oscar Isaac was good in it, because he's Oscar Isaac.

For the most part, Natalie Portman was good in it.

A couple of the tense scenes were indeed quite tension-filled. Two in particular.
The first scene where video footage is found of Oscar Isaac's crew descending into madness, complete with a highly disturbing scene of a crew member's stomach being cut open to show that his internal organs are moving.
The mutated bear attack scene in the house was freaky, tense and legitimately compelling. If every scene were like that we'd have no problem here.

The premise itself, a growing orb likely to consume the world if unchecked, where inside all DNA is refracted and distorted, while not the most unique thing on the planet, is interesting and can be done well, and there were glimpses of it being done well here.

The ending (although they basically gave away the surprises 5 minutes before the surprises) was well done and saved me from being truly merciless on the film.

Now the bad news:

The trailer was bad. It should have ended right before they ENTERED the shimmer. It would have been so much more interesting if the audience came into the movie wondering what was going to be inside. Roland Emmerich has been getting butts into the seats for his terrible films with this style of marketing for years. He can't make movies for the life of him, but he can make trailers. So as someone who saw the trailer multiple times during previews, I fully admit I was put off from the getgo. Then again although I was put off from The Post due to the trailer, I admitted it was better than the trailer made it look, although still not particularly good. But that movie ultimately was tonally different from how the trailer made it seem. With this one, save the ending and a couple details, if you saw the trailer, you saw the movie.

It took a bit too long to get into the shimmer. It would have been fine if in the near hour of exposition leading up to it, the film created more interesting characters than just Isaac and Portman, but pretty much everyone else in the movie is disposable... and was disposed of.

In my opinion, the acting performances from any of our female leads who's name didn't rhyme with Shmatalie Shmortman, were either unremarkable, or flat-out bad. Unfortunately, I thought Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actor who has been in other movies, and has been good in some of them, fell into the latter portion. She seemed to deliver all of her lines in a sarcastic tone, even when it seemed ill-befitting the moment or worse, unintentional.
In the middle of their fight for survival, she finds a video cassette with writing to the effect of "for those that follow". Her response: "Hrmph... I guess that means us." If I'm in the crew I'm like: "Not the time for sarcasm, jerkface." That's what I would say. Jerkface. I'm a badass.

Basically all the dialogue in the movie is spoken in whisper, even when they're not in the shimmer. I always find that really annoying in movies. Comes off as pretentious. That's probably a me-only issue but when every line of dialogue is performed in a quiet tone to make them seem meaningful, it takes the drama away from the actual dramatic moments.

So much unrealistic dialogue.

"In a way it's two bereavements. Losing my daughter, and losing the person I once was". Nobody. Talks. Like. That.

A disturbing video portraying a man having his stomach cut open to reveal his intestines moving around like a snake. Professional medic: "That was a trick of the light." There's being in denial and then there's being a moron.

Ultimately unnecessary flashback scenes that basically only served as trailer footage. Think the Batman in the desert scene from Batman v. Superman. A few of them provide decent exposition, but most of them were needless.

Shephard, recipient of the esteemed "worst actress in the movie" award and deliverer of the great "two bereavements" line during a scene of exposition vomit on a canoe, is attacked by a mutated bear and very clearly has a 0% chance of survival. However, Natalie Portman declares "we have to make sure", just so she can go out on her own and we can get a trailer shot of two white cartoon deer. And the payoff to this scene... HOLY CRAP... she's dead. Speaking of the cartoon deer...

Although the environment effects are beautiful, most of the creature effects are anything but. In any scene where there is bright lighting they look cartoonish and not really there. The good bear attack scene was aided by the fact that it took place during the night time. But the stuff with the deers, or the gator attack, didn't look very good.

At the beginning, Portman's character is asked what happened to the crew. She says "I don't know". She then proceeds to explain exactly what happened to the crew in detail throughout the events of the film.

The big monster at the end of it all is a machine that creates clones of people to the tune of weird psychedelic rock music... meh. It's completely superficial of course but just for me personally it was a little bit of a letdown.

The scene of Portman interacting with her clone was effective, but why did the clone wait until it had a grenade in it's hands to stop mimicking Portman's movements? Shouldn't it have ran alongside Portman at the same time, ultimately blowing both of them up? I think it would have been a far more effective ending if Portman sacrificed herself in order to kill the threat anyway, but that would have required some actual bravery on the part of the filmmaker.

The big bad menace is defeated with a grenade. I wish one of these thriller movies would actually end with a clever way to defeat the monster at the end, not conventional weaponry. Same problem with War of the Worlds. A pretty decent thriller and a threatening menace, and how is it finally taken down? A bazooka. Again, a me problem only. That's why I'm not saying the movie is bad. I'm saying it didn't work for me personally.

The final Oscar Isaac video makes it clear that there's a pretty decent chance that he isn't the real one. Kinda takes the piss out of the twist.

Maybe it's just the New York City tap water because despite the glowing reviews, in my theater there were a couple walkouts and some chirping of "this is stupid" behind me. But me and this film were just never in sync. It came off as a movie desperately wanting to be more smart and meaningful than it actually was.
One person clapped. I'm happy for them.