Alien Arrival

This movie was a pleasant surprise. At first it seemed a bit slow and boring, but after a while I was dying to know what was happening to the main character. I would recommend this movie to everyone that can appreciate a decent sci-fi movie without getting bothered too much by the plot holes in the science and the poor special effects. The story is actually pretty interesting if you can sit through the boring part. I'm hoping for both a sequel and a prequel that are better funded.

Story: good

Immersion: good

Acting: decent

Special effects: poor

Can't say much about this without getting into spoilers. But:

* Decent acting * Decent directing * Slacker plot with a lot of unanswered questions

Not a terrible film, but a notch below mediocre. Nice plot twist that's somewhat unexpected, but most of the film is very slow moving, unexplained, with a generous dose of goofy thrown in. If not for the decent acting and characters (including the AI), this would have been a total schlock loss. The actors and directing keep it from getting less than 4 stars... but even they can't save a plot and story line that was lame from the beginning. Simply needed more development and a bit more ingenuity. As it is, it just doesn't work.

This is a sincere effort, not a piece of schlock (which is how it earned its fourth star from me), and does quite well with its budget, and the acting is reasonable (I especially liked Shaun Micallef's voice work as the shuttle's AI system, RE3F (pronounced "reef")). The problem is that while the film throws a fair number of potentially interesting ideas at the wall, it thinks that more of them stick than actually do, and if the exact rules of how one of the big ones worked were ever made clear it went right by me.

(It's also frustratingly slow-moving at times. At 95 minutes in length, it could have been easily done at 70 to 75.)

It's a low budget film and much is what you would expect. Cliches and bad to decent writing. There isn't a ton of dialogue though so it isn't a big sore spot. Acting is okay to good. Effects are okay except the monster scenes.

Where the movie shines is the world it creates. It's a convoluted and messy story but enjoyable by the end. After the film I had to look up if this was an original story. It seemed like the setup for a comic book or something. Couldn't find anything so I was impressed.

Of course I had never heard about this 2016 sci-fi movie titled "Arrowhead", from writer and director Jesse O'Brien, prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2025. Normally, then sci-fi is not my go-to genre for entertainment. But I will watch the occasional sci-fi movie now and again. And without knowing what I was in for here, I suppose writer and director Jesse O'Brien had every opportunity to entertain and impress me.

However, I found the script and storyline to be somewhat dull. It was a slow paced narrative, and there wasn't really much of anything interesting happening, and that made it quite an ordeal and a struggle to sit through 98 minutes of this.

I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that actually spoke in favor of the movie, as I enjoy watching new and unfamiliar talents on the screen. I will say that the acting performances in "Arrowhead" were good.

Visually then the movie was actually good. Not jaw-droppingly impressive or anything, but good.

"Arrowhead" is a movie that will appeal way more to fans of the sci-fi genre, way more than it did to me as a casual viewer.

My rating of writer and director Jesse O'Brien's 2016 movie "Arrowhead" lands on a four out of ten stars.