This film made the news for all the wrong reasons as it was released digitally by Netflix instead of a more conventional distribution and that apparently upset its director Alex Garland. I didn’t have high expectations of it but the director did make Ex Machina and this was adapted from a science-fiction novel that managed to win the Nebula Award in 2014. I haven’t read it however and after watching this I have no desire to at all.

Lena is a biology professor who is a former soldier while her husband Kane serves in the Special Forces. While on a secret mission, he goes missing and is presumed dead. A year later Kane mysteriously reappears but is severely sick. The authorities detain both of them and reveal that three years ago a meteor fell on the southern coast of the US and created an area covered by a strange effect called the Shimmer. Communications into the zone are impossible and no one sent into it has ever returned except for Kane. The existence of the zone is kept secret from the public but it is slowly growing. Desperate to find out what happened to her husband, Lena volunteers to join the next expedition consisting of an all female team. As they pass through the border they find that their sense of time is distorted. When they are attacked by monstrous animals inside the zone, they also realize that just about every living thing there is mutating rapidly and this naturally includes themselves.

Due to the presence of major stars like Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, one would assume that this is a big budget film but that’s not the case. By modern standards, the budget for this film is fairly modest and unfortunately it shows. Many of the outdoor scenes look like they were shot inside a studio and the multi-hued computer generated lighting used to try to give the zone an otherworldly look makes everything look even more fake. There aren’t enough extras and supporting characters to make a huge government cover-up look real. Everything points to a project whose budget can’t match its scope and ambition. After watching how Arrival portrays a realistic alien first contact scenario, this is just sad.

The poor visuals might be excusable if the film’s themes and plot were interesting but this isn’t the case. The writing is insipid with the most often repeated phrase being “I don’t know”. There’s no coherence in the themes either. At first they imply that the zone randomly mutates everything inside it and there’s no governing intelligence behind it at all but later scenes suggest that there is some purpose there after all. The idea that being in it assails your very sense of self is an intriguing one except that it feels like ripping off Stalker which did everything that the film tries to do but so much more successfully.

I try hard to look for good points even in the worst of films but it’s hard to identify even a single saving grace here. For example, it’s interesting that the expedition here is composed of an all female team and yet no character actually offers an explanation of why they made such a decision. Even Portman’s presence feels like a casting mistake as it’s hard to imagine her being the most competent soldier on the team. This is just a bad film all around.