Lackluster

Rating: 4/10 (9 December 2016)

The premise of the movie is good, and the movie does deliver some suspense and a somewhat new take on the story of what human kinds first encounter with aliens will be like. There are no humanoid aliens or alien technology that looks earthly for instance. It does have some clichés, like for instance "military guy who wants to kill the aliens" and "science people vs military people" which makes the movie a bit formulaic anyway. Its a shame since you can see in other places that the makers did try to do renew the "encounter" genre, but unfortunately they didn't go all the way. Some of these clichés are not even explained properly, and would have left big plot holes if it wasn't because the situations in question are so overused that they are more or less self-explanatory by now.
The movie mixes the encounter scenes with scenes from the main characters personal life, and tries very hard to give the viewer the feeling that all the pieces fit together in the end, but it feels forced and very underwhelming to say the least. You don't get that "Aha" feeling that makes you rethink the whole movie, but more like a "Thats it?" feeling. You wonder why people would go through the trouble of including aliens in a movie that is essentially about a woman and her uninteresting life choices. Its an unusual mix of genres, but unfortunately it is not very successful in this instance, and the result is a movie that is quite messy and both a weak encounter story and a weak drama.
If you haven't watched this movie already, then go watch "Contact" - perhaps again. Its not perfect, but its a lot better than Arrival.