Arrowhead

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.

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.

I was expecting another low-budget Sci-Fi shambles, but this is an entertaining movie with good quality production and acting. There is a lot of stuff going on in the plot to keep the viewer's attention, though most if not all the ideas are taken from other movies, and I'm not sure if the story that comes together here makes 100% sense. The basic motivations, conflicts, and relationships of the characters are rather incompletely developed so it is hard to invest much emotionally, but over-simplifying characterization to squeeze it into a movie's time constraints often just elicits the audience's contempt. Not a ingenious masterpiece, but a decent movie that rehashes some neat ideas.

This movie was a pleasant surprise. At first it seemed a bit slow and boring, but after a while I was dying to know what was happening to the main character. I would recommend this movie to everyone that can appreciate a decent sci-fi movie without getting bothered too much by the plot holes in the science and the poor special effects. The story is actually pretty interesting if you can sit through the boring part. I'm hoping for both a sequel and a prequel that are better funded.

Story: good

Immersion: good

Acting: decent

Special effects: poor

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.