Typical case of: Doesn't know where it wants to go at all.

Rating: 5/10 (13 March 2018)

Like all Netflix movies, I didn't really know what to expect of this. I found Netflix productions to vary quite a lot between good and bad, I guess I started this with an expectation somewhere between "Altered Carbon" and "Helix", of which I consider the first quite good and entertaining and the second as the example for linear stereotypical horror sci-fi. (Although Helix isn't from Netflix, but it fit the example)
Unfortunately, I now have to say it shares a pitiful lot with the latter. I think it started off okay, having Natalie Portman as the powerful and tragic-life protagonist doctor seemed like an idea that could work for me, and sounded like it might spark interesting dialogues and a background story of a woman that's complex, and that I'm interested in, but the movie chose to not really do either of that.
Instead it just put the stereotypical horror movie group of five in a mysterious, alien-whatever occupied strip of, what else could it have been, US soil that proved to be, what else could it have been, populated by genetically mutated animals, that of course are completely predatory, while also practically immortal and seem to lure everywhere, ripping apart the group of explorers, which of course consists of: the cold, focused psychologist leader, the irrational, choleric nurse, the shy young tech expert, the girl you don't even get to learn the stereotype of, because she died too early, and then naturally, the protagonist, the only smart one, painfully apathetic but somehow still the badass. And that's really all there is.
There's still a lot of other scenes where the movie seemed to try to head towards an actually original and interesting story, but right when you thought that part has begun, it's over. Like the relationship of Lena to her husband, the genetic background of the phenomenon, the physical background of the phenomenon, the background stories of the girls, the development of the government's attempts to explore the phenomenon, etc.
All this is ditched for narrating the most basic, unoriginal, horror movie stereotype survival plot and an ending scene that probably would make a nice short film-cgi promo, but just feels really out of place in this movie and very unsatisfying.
I think I understand what this movie wanted to be, a mix of creative, abstract nature documentary and sci-fi alien story, but it was good at neither, because it somehow focused most of its time on being a horror movie. A bad one.
Maybe to finally summarize everything: the movie seemed like it wanted to be something and then just did everything in completely the other direction, skipping out on all important background story and logic, replacing it for bad horror scenes and scenes that are so unconnected, you can hardly tell what they're about.
It's okay to watch if you want to see some pretty nature scenes and for some reason, these to be connected to horror plot, but there really are better movies for that.