a review of 星际叛将：欧西里斯之子

The Osiris Child manages to pull you in during it's opening chapters with impressive visuals, strong character work, and themes of progression related malfeasance. It all implies that we are getting a more thoughtful science-fiction affair and one that's been done on an indie budget. However, a lot of this gets lost along the way as the movie gets distracted with spending time on backwater space hillbillies and devolves into a sci-fi, B-movie with all of the quality of a Syfy original creature-feature. Only prettier. The promise of it's story gets snuffed out in the face of some of the least convincing monsters ever thrown onscreen. Well, that's not true. They're just the worst I've seen in a movie where the director expects us to take them seriously. The biggest threats to our characters are clearly just dudes in rubber suits that have been draped in tattered rags. That removes any of the urgency from the action sequences. The writing takes a steep dive following it's solid introductory moments. The movie sets it self up great and then fails to deliver. It just sort of stops developing it's characters in any satisfactory manner and gets caught up in the shlock. Director Shane Abbess delivers a final product that feels like a mashup of two completely different scripts. One intelligent, the other goofy. Both probably would have made for an enjoyable movie on their own for entirely different reasons. The Osiris Child can't commit to one or the other though and leaves viewers wanting more. In the end all it has going for it is that the strong performances and mostly great visuals continue to shine all the way through. It's what keeps the film from sinking into a realm of complete awfulness. They both deserve a better movie. One that doesn't fluctuate so much between compelling bleakness and silly cheesiness.