Arrowhead (2017)

Very well executed

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Somehow this movie doesn't make any sense, but it does. It kept me guessing... kept me saying to myself, what the **** is going on? Huh? What? I literally had nightmares the next morning. It's weirder than ****. I loved the fast-cut pacing. It was confusing but the writer/director didn't bother to explain what was going on, just left me racing to catch up. I appreciated that because I'm rather sick of the big budget films that feel they have to spell out everything that's happening to everyone watching the movie. I thought it was a cool campy sci-fi movie worth watching.

But none of the brains of either. There were certainly moments where things teased deeper elements, motivations, but then were fumbled and dropped. The story: A resistance fighter is freed from prison with his old commander and given a final job, with the reward being the rescue of his father from execution. The job goes wrong and the fighter is stranded on a desert moon. But there's something out there, there's something wrong with the environment. Our protagonist starts to experience the effects of his new surroundings as he works to save himself. He finds other crew members of the crashed ship, but their motivations are not fully explored or explained. One has a relationship with our protagonist, but is only explored for about 20 seconds of dialogue. Elements of time displacement and body displacement are introduced. A computer moves the plot and our protagonist along through the story. Hints are dropped to keep things mysterious, but the story twists are a stretch or too convenient. The actors perform well with what they're given, but it's very little. Especially true of General Hatch. There are plenty of quality seeds in the story but they never really grow into anything. It's a quality production for the limited budget, but the screenplay could've used a couple more drafts to tighten it up and strengthen the characters. Conclusion: The plate looks delicious coming out of the kitchen, but ultimately the taste is pretty bland.

I loved how it started. I was pretty pumped as the initial setup promised something epic. Then, honestly, i don't know what the hell happened. The entire storyline flew off the rails as soon as the protagonist was on the Arrowhead. And it just got worse from there. I would start to grasp what i thought was some coherence. Then, poof, gone. The acting was decent, the efx were quite good for its budget, the setting very cool. But the story, especially considering the promise, was a huge let down. Not to say that some of the ideas weren't good. The Raaf 'character' was interesting, if inconsistent in his programming...the whole 'time dilation' thing wasn't completely original but i still liked it...the symbiosis between the people and creatures was also kinda neat. But that last part, like a lot of the rest of the movie, was never fully explained. It was just kind of used when it was convenient to the plot. But worst of all even though there was enough ideas (again, some of them good) in this for 5 movies, this thing actually got boring. How is that possible? It was 10-15 minutes too long in the last third. So i usually ask myself to rate a movie based on if i would watch it again. Some movies that leave me confused or like i missed something make me want to see them again to see if i could fill in some of the blanks. This isn't one of them.

If you like Sci Fi and you can still appreciate smaller productions, despite being spoiled by the excess of big budgets, then you will like this movie. Having said this, the production in this movie is great. After the introduction the story slowly develops, everything about the movie picks up a lot in the second half, it becomes intriguing after a Kafka-esque twist and it really becomes an enjoyable watch.With regards to previous reviews - Expressions involving space time belong to everything in the universe not just 'Interstellar the movie', the reference is unnecessary sigh, also the movie isn't totally focused on this theme at all. I would be more concerned with how certain other themes and concepts are unimaginatively explored to death in other movies over the last 100 years. Enjoy this movie on its on merits!