Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (13 March 2000)

This movie was more entertaining than I expected. The basic premise -- a starship runs into trouble, crash lands on an alien planet, and the crew is eaten one-by-one by the locals -- is hardly original, but the execution is good and the result doesn't feel cliched. The movie maintains tension throughout and manages to shock occasionally, something horror movies often find hard to do these days.
The characters are more interesting and have a little more depth than usual. Radha Mitchell does a good job of conveying the vulnerability of the pilot, though she does seem a little miscast at times (isn't she a little too, well, blond for this kind of movie?). Vin Diesel has a lot of on-screen charisma, although his character is a too unflappable to convey the emotion that would have made the ending stronger. Nevertheless, I thought it worked. Perhaps the director didn't want the movie to be /too/ dark.
I could quibble about the world conveyed here -- why, for example, is there a breathable amount of oxygen in the air without plants or seas to maintain it? What do all the predators eat? And what do they do in-between eclipses -- watch cable TV? Why does that gas giant have two sets of rings and how does the second one stay in orbit at a higher latitude (not inclination) than the equator? (Or did I miss-see something in the effects?) That said, this movie still doesn't strain credulity the way others have. The visual and lighting effects convey an effective sense of being on another planet (as opposed to, say, being in Queensland Australia). The aliens are mercifully unhumanoid and even appear to have complex behaviors other eating starship crewmen.
So if the previews for "Mission to Mars" had you psyched for an SF movie, skip that one and go to this instead -- you'll be less likely to be disappointed. I actually felt like seeing it a second time, though at $8.50, it's hard to justify.