If you want to be entertained, skip this one and watch the sequel.

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2007)

I was hoping, perhaps I will finally stumble upon one of those real science-fiction movies with an actual, thought-provoking story-line, which movies like "Dark City", "Event Horizon", "Zardoz", "Solaris" (1973), or "2001" have - but nay. It's just another dull, predictable, seen-it-all-before "Alien" re-hash. Even the creatures look like the "Alien" monsters, except that they have wings.
I mean, here we have a ship crash-landing on a planet with three suns (now there's some real unscience-like nonsense, but okay: it's just a movie) and one might be forgiven to hope that maybe something unique and original will happen story-wise. But no. The survivors are threatened by bat-like creatures who suck blood. YAWN! The rest of the movie is about how the ten little crash-landers try to survive the onslaught of the totally uninteresting flying alien draculas. The first half-hour or so is not even that bad (though hardly super), but once this movie's raison-d'etre materializes in the form of little "Aliens", it was strictly sleepy-time for me.
The movie isn't even visually exceptional. The dialog is your standard crap; "sly"/"cool" one-liners mouthed by characters created by a PC "visionary"; the last four to remain alive are two females and two black guys. Need I say more? The blonde is supposed to be some kind of Sigourney Weaver toughy who is more than a match for many men, while the main Anglo-Saxon male turns out to be both corrupt and weak (he's a dope-addict). All the while, the mass killer, with his deep booming voice, is Vin Diesel who isn't such a bad guy after all, and even has his heart-of-gold won over eventually by the blonde to the extent that he risks his life to save people who normally/logically he shouldn't care less about (or would kill, right? Considering he's supposed to be a psychopath and all). The continuity of the blonde's character is also faulty: at the outset, she very willingly wants to sacrifice dozens of people to save her own heiny, but by the end of the movie she is prepared to give her life for just two. Where's the logic in that? The more years pass since the making of the "Alien" trilogy (or quadrology) the less tolerant I get towards its numerous clones. True science-fiction movies, in the tradition of famous writers' sci-fi novels or stories, are so rare, and that is why it's frustrating to see even a single dollar get spent on a trite, cliché sci-fi horror story when there are so many unique plots that are out there, begging to be filmed.