When a film appears promising in the beginning, but then quickly takes a wrong turn, and keeps going in the wrong direction, it's one of the most frustrating things for the audience imaginable. This film had a decent budget, good special effects, and that nostalgic cinematography similar to that of "Chenobyl". The setup is good, and we are led to believe we will be in for a great ride. And then nothing happens until the end. That is, nothing that would engage the audience, develop characters and their relationships in a meaningful and satisfying way, or provide a plot worth watching. Most of the time the film made no sense at all. One struggles to understand what is going on and what the motivations of the characters are. Lack of logic plagues the film from very early on, and it only gets worse. They have an alien creature, but they don't isolate it properly, they let people come in contact with it and mingle with others on the base. Security measures are virtually non-existent, and it is most unpersuasive that a local base commander could, or would even attempt to keep this a secret from the government. It also makes no sense that a neurologist is recruited to deal with this problem, rather than a team of experts in all fields of biology. Nonsense piled up as the film progressed, and I stopped caring before the film reached half its length. I did not like or even understand the protagonists. By the end I was hoping the film would turn out to be some sort of allegory about Soviet society or human nature, but if it attempted to be that, it went over my head, and frankly I couldn't be bothered to try and understand what they might have tried to say with this film, because the film insults and frustrates the audience, and does not merit that kind of reflection.
I am hugely disappointed, particularly because Russian film has the potential to be a counterweight to the nonsense coming out of Hollywood, yet all too often it just copies Hollywood's cliches. Is Russian society as vapid as the West? Has this entire civilization come to the end of a cycle, needing a fresh start? Because if art is a mirror of society, and art is meaningless and soulless, then what does it say about society?
I am hugely disappointed, particularly because Russian film has the potential to be a counterweight to the nonsense coming out of Hollywood, yet all too often it just copies Hollywood's cliches. Is Russian society as vapid as the West? Has this entire civilization come to the end of a cycle, needing a fresh start? Because if art is a mirror of society, and art is meaningless and soulless, then what does it say about society?