Reviews

I went into this movie with high hopes, having waited months to see it during the pandemic - thank goodness for Amazon Prime!

A lot of this is your standard disaster flick: running from almost certain doom, panic buying, society breaking down, etc etc. But what I really enjoyed were the many small moments of goodness that helped restore faith in humanity. Almost as if the aim was to make the viewer feel that in amongst all the madness, we deserve to survive after all. Whether it was a driver stopping to help, or aid workers putting themselves at risk, or simple the number of people who carried on to keep things running despite the overwhelming odds against them surviving another 24 hours. This movie really went out of its way to highlight that we don't just forget everything and become monsters as soon as we're in danger.

It was also a tremendous relief that the subject of religion was avoided almost entirely (apart from a few subtle nods along the way).

Unlike many predecessors (I'm looking at you, Armageddon and Deep Impact), the ominous comet Clarke wasn't the centre of the movie. There were no deep space shots of it thundering towards Earth or glimmers of hope in the form of deus ex machina or hastily assembled missiles. Clarke is basically gonna wipe us out, and we see everything from the protagonist's perspective, whether it's on the radio or overhead or on the TV. It draws you closer to the danger.

Emotionally, this film is quite tough. Younger children may find some of the scenes quite distressing, right from the start. The themes of separation and helplessness are pretty much always there right until the end, and more than once we had watery eyes.

So yeah, I felt this was worth the wait, and probably a movie we'll watch again.

There's a lot to like here for Hellboy fans... from the very first line in the movie you know it's not for kids, with more swearing and gore than any comic book adaptation I've ever seen.

Harbour does a very good job with Hellboy, and McShane is as good as ever in his role as the father. Fans of American Gods will feel right at home here.

Unfortunately, Alice and the M11 cop are one of the biggest problems here; terrible (and I mean really terrible) English accents, which they try to mask just by overuse of classic British swear words, really let them down. A shame, when it's so unnecessary. But their real problem is a total lack of chemistry, bad acting, and awful dialogue. The scenes they share feel like they were lifted from a straight-to-cable Sci-Fi movie.

Overall the movie is fun to watch, Milla Jovovich is awesome, and there's some really good action.

Final point: if you're going to pretend you're filming in the New Forest, at least research what the New Forest bloody looks like first...

Ok I'm gonna level with you: I watched episodes 1 and 2, got halfway through episode 3 before skipping right to episode 10. I know that shouldn't be enough to post a review, but that's all I can cope with I'm afraid.

The basic premise for this is passable: aliens land on earth, we try to communicate with them, we find out they're really really bad and we're on the edge of a vast galactic empire and we're the next phase of their expansion. Nothing new here, but it's an interesting enough premise for a science fiction story, so I can see how the synopsis made it through to production.

Unfortunately that's where everything went wrong. And I mean EVERYTHING. The science is totally absent; I'm talking instant video chat across 50 light years, a total misunderstanding of what dark matter is, huge spaceships landing on planets and moons, refuelling with rocks they find in a cave at the first attempt, omg I've realised I could literally write forever about how bad this is.

Ok so take out the science and we're left with fiction. So that could still be good, right? Wrong. The dialogue is childish, the astronauts were recruited from Love Island, the decision making is infuriating... the mutiny in the first episode is absolutely laughable. It's badly written and poorly executed... half way through the final episode, when we're seeing some aliens for the first time, the big freaking reveal, we spend 5 minutes on a totally pointless story arc about a pregnant astronaut. Literally: "oh I just assumed I was infertile now because of space" followed by a "hey guys I'm pregnant and one of you two is the Dad". I'm not even exaggerating. It's like Jerry Springer. Some of the characters in the ship are so wooden and one dimensional, I actually though the twist would be that they're ALL actually AI holograms. No such luck.

Is anything going to redeem this car crash? Well, there are some good points. Katee Sackhoff literally carries the entire show on her shoulders. The overall story is quite cool and the mysterious Achaia set the scene for a nice little space opera. The final scenes set to the soundtrack of Muse's The Void are enjoyable.

There isn't enough here for adults, and unfortunately there's too much swearing for it to be viewed by kids, which means it lands in the terrible nomansland in between. There are some great scenes, but in the end, it just isn't worth the effort.

It's so frustrating when you have a good puzzle, and you just can't solve it. This is how everyone involved in making this movie must be feeling right now.

Also, the elephant in the room: how frustrating when there are two movies with the same name and a similar setup and you find yourself watching the wrong one... :(

There is some good here, some (but by no means all) of the acting, the sets, the basic premise of the movie... unfortunately all if that is quickly lost under all the bad things... yes, I'm going to list some of them, don't worry ;)

First, the two biggest: all of the characters are almost immediately detestable. They're the kind of people that if they sat next to you in a bar or restaurant, you'd be annoyed. If you had relatives like this, you'd avoid them. If you worked with people like this, you'd be on Monster.com. This isn't helped by the script. At one point early on, during the dinner 'party' scene, I actually started to wonder if they were making it up as they went along...

The Escape Room itself is actually pretty cool. I've done a few, and this one had some cool puzzles that would definitely work well.

Aaaaaaand then people start dying. Cool? No. Not cool. Very uncool in fact. Plothole number one is 'what was stopping everyone going into the same room to solve the crossword puzzle'? Would have been a short movie, I guess that's the answer. As the totally hatable people start to get picked off, you're left wondering why. Aside from the first death, nobody actually has to die, yet the final 'puzzle' relies on only one person making it to that stage... there is a highly contrived feel to all of the deaths, almost like the puzzles in a real escape room, oddly.

And when Natasha is left with her hand in the bear (suitably vague to avoid spoiling it), you're left wondering why they didn't use the cuffs to pull the lever, or indeed if such an injury could or did kill her...

Finally, the ending. Some confusing scenes edited together in a hurry, Odd flashbacks of sex games that aren't connected to the rest of he story (or are they?), and our 'protagonist' (was she? Can we call her that?) being set free because 'nobody will believe her story'...

I sense that the budget was short a few thousand and we're left with half a movie.

They tease a sequel here. They absolutely shouldn't do that.

I've never written a review, but felt compelled to do so after reading some of the 1 star reviews here.

This is no Citizen Kane or Matrix. It's never going to deserve a perfect 10. But it also doesn't deserve one star. To all the people giving it the lowest possible score because of the 'annoying children', I have a message for you: as a parent, I can 100% confirm that their reactions were accurate and well scripted. All the screaming. Totally realistic. The 'poor decision making'? Yup, would totally happen too. I'm sick of how binary reviews have become... didn't enjoy the movie? Worst movie ever. Seriously, get a grip.

Anyway, here's my review (trying my hardest to avoid spoilers, unlike some people here):

Things this movie didn't do well for me: first, the 'visions' were over too soon. We needed another 5-10 minutes of that. It felt too quick and rushed in. Second, when the reveal comes, we needed more of the backstory... at least another couple of minutes. It all made sense, but it really warranted some additional background, particularly regarding the evacuation. Third, right at the end, the scene in the train was super rushed. The CGI as it went into the mountain was distractingly poor, so they could have spent a little more time on that one... would also be a super simple re-edit if they're thinking of making tweaks to the movie. Finally, I was left a bit unsatisfied that yet another movie with a grand theme such as extinction failed to zoom out and show the bigger picture. This is a pretty big world, and yet we're zoomed in on one area of one city... I really wanted more context.

What worked well: first, the action was really good, definitely had me sitting up at points. The stress of trying to save the kids and the wife at the same time felt real, I really empathised with the protagonist and thought they nailed some of that. Second, the premise for the movie was genuinely brilliant. There's a story here that they're barely scratching the surface of, and I'm not sure I've seen it told this way before, so some marks out of ten for originality of plot. Finally, the twist... you can feel it coming from the very first scene of the movie, and it's slowly drip fed to you... you kinda feel like you know what it is, which is why I found the reveal so satisfying, because it really does take you by surprise.

Anyway, that's my tuppence, thanks for reading ;)