2036 Origin Unknown

It's 2030. Mars 1 crashes on the planet after getting hit by an energy field. Six years later, Mack Wilson (Katee Sackhoff) leads the investigation into the crash chaffing under the artificial intelligence computer ARTI's control. They find an object of unknown origin.

This is reminiscent of an old style sci-fi magazine story. British filmmaker Hasraf Dulull started in CGI and videogames into trying to make these smaller budget sci-fi movies. This could have been a Twilight zone episode although it may still be not good. It's stuffed with CGI scenes of a Mars mission. The human scenes consist mostly Sackhoff, a computer voice, and a techie room. The movie lacks a human touch and a human story. In short, it lacks humanity no matter how hard Sackhoff tries. It's only good for a shorter sci-fi TV episode.

... if you understand that SciFi doesn't need to be about exploding space ships and exotic aliens. I like how the "think about..." SciFi came back in the last few years with movies like Arrival. This is similar in setting. Everything plays out in the command center of an exploration mission. It starts out a bit boring, but after the discovery on Mars I got hooked. Then in the end it got all messy. The computer does something pretty much unexpected and inconsistent with its previous behavior (like ONE minute before), after that we get an ending which seems to try to mimic the ending of 2001 with a little bit of Contact spliced in, but in a way that seems like the writer thought "It has to be hard to understand for the audience. What better way to achieve this is there than writing an end I myself won't understand?" The ending of 2001 is easy to comprehend in comparison.

Holy cow, what a steaming hot mess this movie is. It somehow manages to feel simultaneously confusing, boring, cerebral in a terrible and condescending way, and extraordinarily amateurish. I'm not really sure I managed to follow the plot. It starts with a manned mission to Mars in the near-future that goes awry for unknown reasons, moves on to what is basically a one-woman show about an earth-based astronaut (think drone program , but in space) working with an advanced AI to investigate what went wrong during that mission, and finishes with scenes that I think are meant to suggest a 2001-ish symbolism concept. But honestly my understanding is based upon a lot of guesswork. It feels incomplete because if I did understand the basic plot correctly it is just filled to the brim with plot holes and bizarre assumptions. And the last twenty minutes is so dull that I fell asleep. I would just avoid the movie.

This movie, while certainly not the worst movie I've seen, plays more a good SiFi channel movie then a netflix original. I suppose my biggest issue is that this movie doesn't bring anything new to the table despite being incapable of staying on topic. It grabs at every sci fi concept out there (space flight, AI, aliens, future tech, etc) but it feels like it just takes from existing media rather than contributing.the CGI shifts quickly from good to terrible. Overall, not a great movie

I watched it to the end. Katee needs a new agent. This movie was terrible. Only reason it got funded was I assume because she was in it. So bad.