Disturbingly impressive & impressively disturbing

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 2002)

A movie that starts out as a run-of-the-mill sci-fi creeper in the vain of Alien, this soon proves itself to be the equal of that film in terms of building and maintaining tension. The cast works excellently together, using, in a similar manner to Alien, a mixture of US movie actors and British TV actors to provide both grit and bravado (apologies for the stereotyping). While it's immediately noticable that all Sean Pertwee ever does is swear (can you find a line where he doesn't?) most of the other characters manage to maintain the tension through their dialogue while avoiding tacky horror cliches or glossing over them with enough dark cinematography and soundtrack that the cheapness of the dialogue is lost in the overwhelming atmosphere of tension.
If you're wondering why I've used the word "tension" so much in the above paragraph, it's because that is the whole raison d'etre of this movie. It aims to create tension and successfully does so. It is also quite genuinely disturbing at times, through the contrast of suspense techniques such as empty corridors and clattering noises, with outright gore (the guy suspended above the operating table actually made me go "eeeurrrgh" which no film has in quite a while). I'm suspicious that the people claiming "this didn't scare me" are attempting to give themselses a cinematic ego-boost.
As for the bad points; the dialogue isn't wonderful throughout (phrases like "the darkness inside me" sound a bit comic-book). Sam Neill is exceptionally boring in everything he's ever been in, including this - please, film producers, stop casting this man! And yes, the effects are quite shaky in places (mainly on the burning man that appears occasionally). On the whole though, the sets are good, the atmosphere is great, and it does what it sets out to do. A good, solid, horrifying, horror-film!