Yeah! Nah...

Rating: 4/10 (16 March 2018)

I went into this wanting, trying even, super, super hard to love it.
An all-female sci-fi movie?
Yeah!
But nah.
I loved the score. Atmospheric and clever, it makes a real contribution. The effects are alright mostly, although some of the environment looks a bit too much like an Instagram celebrity's idea of a gorgeous outdoor country-chic wedding, and the mutant creatures are definitely on the Jim Henson side of spectrum.
Plot overall is to my liking, but it's realisation is way too nutty to make it sing. The dialogue is dire. The characterisation of some of the key characters is just weird - I'm looking at you Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Some of the choices made by the lady posse are maddening. Actually, a lot of them are. And a film which requires such suspension of disbelief can't survive under the weight of so many clangers.
You're going to clomp into an alien wasteland with some semi-autos but nary a helmet? You're going to hop into a tinny (a little aluminium row boat) after you've just met your first gigantic gatorshark? You're going to use your NV goggles in a well-lit space but then put them down when you're trying to shoot the bearasaurus rex that just took your crew mate?
The list is literally endless. And these are just the minor details. There are gigantic ones too. Did they not do a blood test on the 'husband' once he makes it into isolation? Did they maybe think to do the same on Lena when she reappears? Has G-earth really not picked up on a several mile squared, and expanding, shimmering, alien habitat during its latest run around the planet? Any attempt at explaining why Lena's been gone 4 months but only experiences a couple of days of time loss? Any reason why the greatest army on the planet didn't try a box of matches as a possible WMD, seeing as in the end a bit of phosphorus did the trick?
I'm totally bummed out. I want to see powerful female leads carrying films in all sorts of genres but this film reduced a group of super brainy women down to their various flaws and frailties (sad mom, a cutter, cancer, a lesbian - and we know for sure she's a lesbian because she keeps wearing a singlet when everyone else is in long johns) and then had them make the sort of choices you'd expect from a group of undergraduates in a slasher film.
Not a terrible film, but a profoundly disappointing one.