The Occupant

Where to start?

Was looking forward to this.

Sci-fi vs reality.

Human difficulty vs death

No spoilers, this is a movie of three parts and they just fail to join up.

Lots of open ends, with no answers.

Full of promise and yet delivers less and less as time goes on.

I was hoping the end would be transindetal or sci-fi laden, no such luck.

The Good The performance of the actors and the chosen locations were very acceptable

The Bad Dialogue moved from bland to dull

The Ugly The script and story held a lot of potential which was either abandoned or ignored. Then the major plot holes that were never addressed so you never were sure if a plot hole was an abandoned plot point or not. A major point was the distance that the MC travels was both inconsistent and impossible to cover in the time given.

Firstly, if you're looking for a sci-fi movie, this isn't one. I'm bewildered why it would be marketed as such. If anything, it's a wilderness survival movie, where every calamity that occurs is a result of the character making immensely dumb decisions. It's a movie that deals with guilt and mourning; but for no coherent reason and in a completely over-the-top manner.

Without giving spoilers, the movie is essentially just a string of glaring plot holes linked together with over-acting, ludicrously 'tense' music, and ridiculously inappropriate sentimentality. It's completely incoherent, and that does nothing to engage the viewer.

This is a huge miss. Don't waste 105 minutes on it.

This film had a decent foundation as well as its concept, but The Occupant falls for the oldest trick in the book when it comes to a science fiction film and that's when they relegate it for filler near the end. Instead its a survival story with a character facing a predicament both physically and figuratively.

Survival stories are usually exciting because you watch a character struggle and dig down deep to survive precarious oppositions and get back to civilization in one piece.

Our lead actress Ella Balinska does try her hardest but her character isn't very interesting on the page, other than the usual guilt riding characteristic. It is also quite slow paced and for a film clocking in at about 100 minutes, it means it could easily have been trimmed in the editing department.

It is however a beautifully shot film from Dutch director Hugo Keijzer, The musical score from Renger Koning is pretty solid as it adds to the film's overall vibe. When you finally get to the pinch of sci-fi this movie holds in the third act, it is enjoyable but too little too late.

Was really hoping for a much better and stronger film, but sometimes you get shortcomings.

Ugh. Hollywood puts out more trash. Let's start with a field geologist that knows nothing about the field. She travels to an area she knows absolutely nothing about, prepares very little, and proceeds to make very, very dumb decisions throughout the entire film.

She meets a guy over a radio transmission and starts off getting snippy with him right off the bat. "I'm headed your way!" No thanks. If this is what I have to look forward to, stay where you are.

She's single (surprise, surprise) and got Daddy issues. There are no nude or even half naked scenes, so we don't get to see all her trashy, splotchy, feminist tattoos scattered all over her self, and she had enough sense to not wear her septum ring in the extreme cold, so I'll give her that much credit.

Overall, she's pretentious, arrogant, and extremely combative. Not a pleasant person to have coffee with, let alone come to "rescue" you.

Watching her stumble around for almost an hour straight was pretty boring, as was the string of bad decisions and lack of common sense. In the end, I was hoping for a bear or a Siberian Tiger to snatch her up and save us from the uneventful ending Visually, very striking, with beautiful scenery, but void of anything beyond that. Boring, dull and a snoozer.

Oh BTW, the sci-fi. Isn't much. Zzzzzzzzz.