Gravity meets Alien with a very poor script

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2017)

If you want to experience what the world's most stupid space crew would do when they encounter alien life, then this is the movie for you. You will be spoiled with one idiotic decision after the other, making you wonder if the alien life-form also has telepathic powers, using it to dumb down it's prey.
At the start of the movie the crew is besides themselves with joy when they manage to reanimate a single alien cell that has been dead for billions of years. Even when it starts to replicate and grow very fast, none of them feels any sense of possible danger.
After the alien life-form attacks the scientist, there still seems to be no hurry to just shoot the lab into space. After all, it's just mankind's future that is at stake. No, the most important thing is to save the scientist. This crew would have benefited from a sociopath in their midst or a protocol obsessed captain. That would have saved them many times.
To make matters worse, a huge chunk of the dialogue is redundant. You see that the creature has grown, then somebody says "Wow, it has grown". You see the alien make a fast escape, somebody says "Wow, it is fast". You see the alien being smart, you hear someone say "How smart is this thing?". You see the alien look for air holes, you hear someone say "It is looking for air holes" you get the picture. Who on earth would write a script like that and not notice the stupendous redundancy?
The movie does have some great tense and gory moments that work well. There just is not enough of them to make it work as a good horror movie. The alien itself starts out very realistic, but looks increasingly CGI during the movie and the many close-ups don't help. It looks too surreal to be threatening.
All in all, it was a huge disappointment to me. With a star cast like that, you would expect more than just a very bland space thriller.