Of all Steven Spielberg’s movies, I don’t think I’ve ever walked into one knowing less: Only that it was scifi in some way, with some reference to religion in some way. I was surprised that it was not at all crowded, and there were no audible reactions from the audience at any point, which in this case was a bad sign.
I was SO disappointed.
First, it’s a messy story. SS may be the greatest living American storyteller, but not here. Most of his movies are fairly linear, with pretty much a single clear throughline. This has messily disparate story-lines, mostly two, and you know they’ll converge, but it’s not clear how - and it doesn’t turn out to be that interesting. I think the closest parallel may be, a bit, Close Encounters, with the main narrative of Dreyfus, with Melinda Dillon a distant second. But that one worked.
Second, surprisingly pedestrian dialogue, despite the screenplay by David Koepp.
Third, uninspired casting. In fact, possibly worst casting of any SS film. No one is particularly attractive, although there’s one nice moment toward the end where Emily Blunt’s face in shadow look like an alien. In particular, Josh O’Connor is not only at the low end of ordinary, with stick-out ears, but pretty much lacking in personality.
Fourth, dismally, it was devoid of SS’s usual generous dose of humor. One small inconsequential chuckle, and that was it. Even a movie as serious as Schindler had a lot of amusing moments.
Fifth, rather unusual for SS, uniformly unattractively cinematography.
Mulling it over, hours later, it felt as though there’s a great movie, the core of a great movie, trapped inside here, maybe one without the aliens, without anything mystical—just the chase to expose the secrets. As I puzzled back through it, it doesn’t seem as if the core connection is ever explained: Why were these two people contacted? And exactly how? And did it all remain dormant from their childhoods? And what did the aliens expect? Were these two intended as the equivalent of sleeper cells? What suddenly triggered Blunt’s channeling now? Is it just coincidental that O’Connor stole the evidence at the same time? If this had been going on for decades, why did it surface now?
I was puzzling over it afterwards, wondering, so, what does this need? The single biggest problem, I suspect, is a leading man who has neither looks nor charm. That might be able to help it transcend the problems of a mediocre script.
I wonder if maybe SS is best at concrete—that the more abstractly mystical he gets, the shakier he is, the less of a grip he has? In the past, even with his scifi like Close Encounters and ET, they were grounded in physical logic: extra-terrestrial life arrives openly, physically, and interacts with humans they encounter. They were fully enclosed in reality. Even in Raiders, the mystical/supernatural is confined to just a few minutes toward the end—and basically has no effect, other than killing the bad guy.
So, being a huge SS fan, I was hugely disappointed.