Rating (2 out of 5)

Here is another Netflix movie that really isn’t worth watching. I have to really wonder about what Netflix is producing and if their content will ever be able to draw in subscribers.  But this is a movie review not a business blog, so on to the movie.

Warning, their will be spoilers here.  Hard to describe the movie without alerting you to the key plot twist.  We start out with our main character played by Michael Peńa, who is having nightmares while he sleeps.  We only get flashes of some attack with him and his wife hiding and spaceships.

Life at home and work is strained because of his lack of sleep.  At work he makes a mistake. He misses an important engagement with the family because he falls asleep somewhere at work.  Based on the advice of his boss, he goes to see a sleep clinic, but when sitting with another patient, he doesn’t think he is crazy, and that he is seeing the future.

That night, while closing down a party for his wife’s promotion, their are bright lights in the sky, and the attack begins.  The attack sequence is pretty good.  Then the aliens are in the building, going floor by floor, killing everyone.  The aliens make a chirping sound and have 3 large bulbs on their back, I give you this context so you understand how stupid the big reveal is.

During the attack they are separated from their daughters.  They fight their way through the building, get their daughters, and get back to their condo.  An alien is proceeding to the door, so they decide to barricade door.  By the way, speaking from experience, barricading is not usually a good idea, 1). let’s everyone know you are there, 2) then they just get pissed off because they have to work to get in.  Well, alien gets in and sees the daughter under the table.  The alien looks closely at the kid, and then the parents come to the rescue, and are able to knock out the alien and take his gun.

Now the gun appears to appear to be a normal assault rifle with a bayonet.  It has biometric security on it.  But our wee hero happens to be good with electronics and is able to unlock the gun to use it against the aliens. The gun is a key component of their their escape.

They find another family in the building and start planning their escape.  A few sequences later, that family dies, and we escape to the tunnels.  We discover that the alien isn’t dead, and his gun has GPS, so he starts tracking his gun.

Our family makes their way to the factory, where our hero believes it is safe.  We get their and it turns out they some people had been planning for this.  The mother is hurt, so they medical team runs what looks like a very painful diagnostics.  They can’t save her.

But the alien who we previously knocked out, and captured in the tunnels can help.  So the kids go with the other adults to the train that is further underneath the bunker and the couple stay with the alien, who is actually a human.  He had taken his helmet off to reveal a young man. Not the final big reveal.

So the couple in the alien are in some storage room, and the alien is trying to save her.  When he cuts her open, their isn’t any guts.  Just parts.   This is where the big reveal comes, and is elaborated through a dream sequence.

Everyone here is Artificial Intelligence A.I.  Many years ago when AI first came to be, the humans in fear of AI decided to terminate all the AI, but the AI fought back and took over the planet.  The humans escaped to Mars, where they have been planning their attack for 50 years.

Apparently the dreams he was having were flashbacks to the original war.  Most of the AI had their minds wiped so they wouldn’t remember, except a few, like our hero’s boss.

How lame is that and let me point out all the problems:

1. The kids didn’t get any older in the 50 years, and the little girl was still a little girl, not any smarter or wiser.  Understand that was part of the sell for the first part of the movie, but real hole for the last part of the movie.
2. AI hadn’t evolved in the 50 years.  Smaller, transferable, duplicate bodies, blah, blah, blah.
3. Why did they wipe the minds?  To make life easier, what a weak excuse, and apparently it wasn’t too successful.
4. So if they won a battle, and knew humans would return to earth. They didn’t build any monitoring equipment. They didn’t any self defense systems, armor, military, etc.  Please, so full of holes there.
5. Why did the human force look like aliens.  I can understand full battle armor, with suits, but looking like aliens, you were trying to M. Night me, and you failed.
6. 1. Oh yeah, the young human/alien, said that they didn’t know if the air would be breathable.  That was a cover line, but doesn’t explain the final scene where they escaped via train through a lush forest. And really the humans wouldn’t have scouted everything better before launching their main attack.

Now the kids were just annoying.  I get they should be scared, but they didn’t listen to anything their parents said, and put the entire family in danger multiple times.  While I will give it to you once.  Over and over becomes tiring, and a gimmick to make things happen.

I wish I had something good to say.  I like both Michael Peńa and Lizzy Caplan, but the story was crap.