65 [Blu-ray]

What’s this? A wholly original film? Not a sequel, based on a comic, start of a trilogy or whatever? What will they think of next???

Adam Driver is Mills. A space pilot. He has some personal things that are weighing on his mind. His spaceship crashes. On a very hostile world. There’s no sign of intelligent. There’s some very nasty creatures that seem to want to do nothing other than eat him. Is he alone? And what’s that up in the sky? He needs to get off the planet. Quicker than he thought….

I do wish I could have seen this without knowing anything about the meaning of the title. But that was given away in the trailer. And on the back of the box also. But there we are. You can get into the movie easily even if you do know that in advance.

This is a monster movie. And it also tries to convey the experience of being stranded on a hostile world. Without being able to properly communicate with anyone else. It perhaps doesn’t quite make as much of the latter as it could. But it tries. So full marks for effort.

There isn’t much to Mills as a character, beyond the personal things mentioned. Adam Driver does fine in the part though. Making him a person doing his best to survive against all the odds.

Where it works is the setting. The landscapes are excellent. The monsters are good and scary. The cgi is exceptional at times. And does manage to put some bigger name movies to shame. There is also genuine jeopardy. You really don’t know how the film is going to end.

It also tries hard to convey things by sound. This succeeds. The sound design is very good. Mills character arc re the personal issues has played out fine by the end.

It did keep me hooked and watching till the end. Although it doesn’t really live in the mind for very long at all after that. You can keep watching during the beginning of the end credits for some more images. But they’re not essential. There’s nothing else in the credits you need to watch before beyond that.

This is a twelve certificate because of the scary parts and some very mild person v monster violence. No more than that though.

This didn’t get critical previews. So no reviews on the box. It does come from the writers of a Quiet Place. It tries hard to sell that angle on the cover of the dvd. It’s nothing much like that though beyond the basic people v monsters thing. This is a film worth giving a chance to though. People have been asking for original stand alone films. So here’s one! Give it a try. You never know.

The dvd has the following language and subtitle options:
Languages: English. English audio description.
Subtitles: English. Danish. Dutch. Estonian. Finnish. German. Italian. Latvian. Lithuanian. Norwegian. Swedish. Turkish.

The disc does begin with an anti piracy ad, but you can skip that via the next button on the dvd remote.

Extras:

Deleted scenes. Five of these. You can watch in a row or individually. The former will take eight mins. One four and five are pretty good. Two and three are very good. So worth a look.

Set in stone: Film makers. Four mins with the directors on their vision. An interesting listen.

Creating the world of sixty five: Five mins on the production design. Quite interesting viewing.

Primordial planet: a three min long look at the setting. I won’t spoiler how this is done, but it is quite clever so worth a look.

Final showdown: concepts to screen: nine mins of some scenes with the storyboards for them. It is interesting to compare these.

Good film. Good package to go with it.