Arrival
When you think of most Hollywood alien films, you’re probably thinking of special effects driven action blockbusters. Not so much with Arrival whose aliens arrive as a kind of 12 pack of sentinel objects, just sent as some kind of massive mind fuck.
And too an extent that’s exactly what arrival is. That and a slow burning story of a linguistic expert with nothing left to loose and everything to gain, a role driven by a superb performance by Amy Adams. If her on screen presence doesn’t mesmerize you you’ll probably watching the wrong kind of film. But Arrival’s story of these sentinel beings is a story of one woman’s willingness to listen, to go further and to basically show a room full of men, that she knows better than them.
Arrival is a perfectly created drama that draws you in, and keeps you wondering where on earth is this journey taking me, and then without warning does a M. Night Shyamalan on us. But in a good way. In a way that makes The Sixth Sense look predictable. And it’s a twist that twists as it reveals itself making Arrival end in the most satisfying of ways.
Rating: M Offensive language.
FILMGUIDE rating:
