This one is definitely a different flavor of sci-fi. With chicks. I kinda lambasted Arrival for being Chick Sci-Fi. This one is that too, but with less laziness and slightly less skewed logic? Still kind of a casting issue, though. Natalie Portman looks like she’s on her third round of chemo, but is still the strong female lead? I dunno, something rubs me wrong with that. She acts ok. But she looks like, well, an emaciated sock. Eat a steak, girl! It will make you stronger!
Opening sequence, it’s pretty damn serious. Obviously military. Quarantine protocols that put all the Alien movies to shame. Lena (Natalie Portman) is being questioned, what did you do, what did you see, what do you Know? The rest is mostly flashbacks as we watch her emotional journey regarding her ...fuck. This is lame. She’s a broken ex-military medical professor grieving for the loss of her military husband last seen a year ago. Plot points are revealed involving a lighthouse and... She gets to find out why he was missing for a year, with a bunch of other broken chicks, behind what they call the Shimmering (which is in no way, shape or form related the The Shinering). But at least here, it’s somewhat logical when it comes to potential alien encounterings. I think. But I am not an alien, nor have I ever played one on T...fucking hell. It’s Mars Attacks guy doing the video of this, isn’t it? Shit. I...well…fuckit.
There’s some drama here that is a bit meh. The Shimmering effect kinda looks like a giant soapbubble, but if you have to visualize it, I guess it’s a decent job. Kinda touches on a bit of Lovecraft’s “indescribable” vibes from The Colour Out of Space in that respect. And it does lay it out in a pretty decent fashion between the flashbacks from the opening scene, and the Inception flashbacks within that. From a scientific standpoint, maybe sending a full crew of females into the Void is a valid hypothesis after the failure of what’s gone before. Maybe. Minus that, it still is an okay premise and almost decent execution. And fucking bears. Well. Almost bears. But not Cocaine Bears. They all dead by this point. Probably woulda been better with Bill Paxton in the group though. Just sayin.
