Explorer

Can't say much about this without getting into spoilers. But:

* Decent acting * Decent directing * Slacker plot with a lot of unanswered questions

Not a terrible film, but a notch below mediocre. Nice plot twist that's somewhat unexpected, but most of the film is very slow moving, unexplained, with a generous dose of goofy thrown in. If not for the decent acting and characters (including the AI), this would have been a total schlock loss. The actors and directing keep it from getting less than 4 stars... but even they can't save a plot and story line that was lame from the beginning. Simply needed more development and a bit more ingenuity. As it is, it just doesn't work.

It's a low budget film and much is what you would expect. Cliches and bad to decent writing. There isn't a ton of dialogue though so it isn't a big sore spot. Acting is okay to good. Effects are okay except the monster scenes.

Where the movie shines is the world it creates. It's a convoluted and messy story but enjoyable by the end. After the film I had to look up if this was an original story. It seemed like the setup for a comic book or something. Couldn't find anything so I was impressed.

Of course I had never heard about this 2016 sci-fi movie titled "Arrowhead", from writer and director Jesse O'Brien, prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2025. Normally, then sci-fi is not my go-to genre for entertainment. But I will watch the occasional sci-fi movie now and again. And without knowing what I was in for here, I suppose writer and director Jesse O'Brien had every opportunity to entertain and impress me.

However, I found the script and storyline to be somewhat dull. It was a slow paced narrative, and there wasn't really much of anything interesting happening, and that made it quite an ordeal and a struggle to sit through 98 minutes of this.

I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that actually spoke in favor of the movie, as I enjoy watching new and unfamiliar talents on the screen. I will say that the acting performances in "Arrowhead" were good.

Visually then the movie was actually good. Not jaw-droppingly impressive or anything, but good.

"Arrowhead" is a movie that will appeal way more to fans of the sci-fi genre, way more than it did to me as a casual viewer.

My rating of writer and director Jesse O'Brien's 2016 movie "Arrowhead" lands on a four out of ten stars.

This movie may be a good first time effort for the director, but it does almost everything wrong. The story can't decide what it's about, the characters are thinly sketched and inconsistent, the effects from tolerable to embarrassing, and the sets and locations looked almost exactly like a 70s Doctor Who or Star Trek effort. There is sometimes a decent atmosphere and some camera work is effective. But it's the muddled story which often makes no sense, that killed it for me. It's not that is was too complex, it's simply that scenes, and even individual dialog lines, didn't connect to each other in any way.

I think possibly if you watched it slightly drunk and with the sound off, it could seem like an amusing diversion, because of some effective images - mostly skies with planets and ships. But trying to follow it like a proper movie just leads to disappointment.

I would say that when it comes to judging good science fiction movies I have a good sense of sniffing out the good from the bad, normally I can tell within just few minutes if the movie holds any promise, but this movie is somewhat very strange… it starts of very weak even through a big chunk of the budget was spent in the first 20minutes of the movie, I found myself compelled to continue watching even when it didn't hold much appeal! I'm glad I waited, the story picked up and the acting is 10x better in the second half of the movie than it was at the start, its rare to see a movie that goes from so bad to so good, and I have to take my hat off to the entire crew for pulling of a superb low-budget sci-fi.