Rating:** Review Date: 3/21/25
Director: Flying Lotus
Cast: Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott,
Beulah Koale, Flying Lotus
A sci-fi horror film starring Eiza González? Sign me up! I don't even
care how bad it is. Unfortunately, it's pretty bad. Riya Ortiz (Eiza González)
wakes up in a research station on a strange planet without any memory of who she
is or where she is. On top of that, her entire crew has been violently murdered
and the station's life support systems are compromised. Assistance arrives in
the form of Brion (Aaron Paul), a teammate who travels to the planet surface from
an orbital base station. Together, they try to piece together what happened, but
can either of them be trusted? In addition to being a dazed and injured amnesiac,
Riya is heavily drugged and plagued by horrific visions that might be related to
the crew's fate. Meanwhile, Brion insists that they drop the investigation and
head back to orbit where they can sort things out in a safer environment. Late
game revelations turn everything upside down, forcing Riya to fight for her life.
I really wanted to like this low budget outing, but it's a cinematic mess.
The pacing is challenging, the cinematography is garish and off-putting, and the
visual effects tend to be embarrassing and nonsensical (the spaceship scenes
are especially cringey). The plot is needlessly confusing and convoluted, which
introduces way too many plot holes and logical inconsistencies. Things just
don't line up, and my brain was chewing on it all night trying to make sense of
everything. Perhaps in the spirit of cosmic horror, all of the mystery and
ambiguity was intended to keep the audience off balance and in the dark. In
this way, it reminded me a lot of
"Annihilation" (2018).
And perhaps the cinematography itself gives clues as to what's going on.
On the plus side, Eiza González is incredible and gives a remarkably
confident and convincing performance. Her fierce presence and fiery beauty are
undeniable and she's breathtaking to behold. Her makeup is stunning and she
maintains a beautifully perfect smokey eye throughout (which raises some
interesting questions that aren't addressed). As a character, Riya is a smart
and tough woman who's well-equipped to take on whatever comes her way. Mostly.
Aaron Paul does a decent job as a rival, and Brion's increasingly intense
interactions with Riya ratchet up the tension. The other characters only show
up in brief flashbacks that don't offer much insight and don't really invite
you to care about them.
Overall, it looks and feels like a "direct to video" movie, and I'm surprised
it got a theatrical release. I'm glad it did, since that's how I prefer seeing
movies, but it's obvious that the distributor didn't have much faith in it
because there were only two showtimes, and both of them were past my bedtime.
It's worth watching for Eiza González alone, as long as you go into it
with low expectations. I look forward to seeing her continue to hone her
action persona.
Sadly, the film is painfully convoluted and becomes more confusing the more
you think about it. The first WTF moment is when Riya walks outside at the
beginning of the film, into a barely breathable atmosphere. It takes her
about two minutes to realize she can't breathe, before making a desperate
run back to the station. It's also pretty insulting that she doesn't even
notice that the sky is swirling with psychedelic colors until the camera pans
up. And what was the point of that? We never see that happen again. Was
it a hallucination triggered by her oxygen-deprived brain, or part of her
"alien vision?"
This of course leads to the film's best twist as well as its biggest
problem - the fact that Riya is infected by an alien parasite. The whole
alien possession aspect is ridiculous, and everyone who gets infected turns
into something hideous looking, except for Riya. She remains beautiful and
unchanged the entire time. She also doesn't go completely insane like her
crewmates did. Maybe because she's an unreliable narrator? Also consider
the fact that after getting infected she attempted to commit suicide by
ingesting cyanide, but somehow she didn't die. Or did she? Is she just a
reanimated corpse being controlled by the alien parasite? Because they do
just that later in the film. Did the parasite keep her alive, or did the
cyanide somehow adversely affect the parasite, along with the anti-psychotic
drugs that she's taking? It's totally unclear.
Which naturally brings us to Brion, who doesn't actually exist.
Is he simply a figment of Riya's imagination, or just a mental manifestation of
the parasite inside her? The film implies that he has no physical presence,
which creates numerous logic holes. There's also the fact that the real
Brion's body is in the same ventilation shaft that Riya went through to repair
the hull breach. She would have had to literally step over him to get in
there, so why was this not addressed? Or was that the alien controlling her?
And then there's that pesky hull breach, which happens halfway through the
film. What was that all about? Was that Clarke attempting to come back to
the station? And for what purpose? If so, she was in hiding for several hours
while Riya was conducting her investigation, and the station's computer never
warned about unauthorized access or other beings on the ship. Then again,
the station's computer was also compromised by the aliens. We later learn
that Riya told Clarke to escape via Brion's shuttle, so why did she come back?
Was there a problem with the ship? Did she forget the keys? We get a
glimpse of something possibly being wrong, which also forced Riya to return
to the station, but we're never told what it was, and Riya's second attempt
to escape didn't indicate any problems. And why did Brion (the real Brion)
land the ship a mile away? You would think the station would have a landing
pad nearby...
Let's talk about those alien parasites for a moment. They're like the
size of a cucumber, and somehow manage to enter their hosts via their ears,
nose, and mouth. Or in Riya's case, it enters her brain through a 1" cut
above her eyebrow. This really strains the suspension of disbelief and the
CGI looks awful. In a gratuitous nod to
"Prometheus" (2012), Riya
instructs a robotic surgeon to remove the parasite from her brain, which is
almost laughable in its absurdity. But to González's credit, she manages
to sell it. Of course, once the parasite is excised, she seems to instantly
recover with no internal damage or side effects, which defeats the "is
Riya actually dead?" theory.
Speaking of the seemingly omnipotent robotic surgeon, it's definitely one
of the highlights of the film. It's just unfortunate that the animation wasn't
more convincing. It's basically the size of a briefcase and has a multi-function
arm that can perform radical surgeries on squirming and fully conscious patients,
as well as conduct extensive non-invasive body scans and autopsies. The darkly
humorous aspect is that it speaks in Japanese with a cheery female voice,
and the UI is inappropriately comical. After performing an autopsy, the screen
apologizes by displaying "Sorry for your loss." It's a cute and clever
gimmick, but much like the rest of the film, the execution feels lacking.