Osiris (2025)
When dinner goes down fighting.
Tonight’s movie is hitting up some science fiction, and I always like me some space action. Props department and effects department are some of my favorite things - if in part because it’s so visual and easily identifiable as imaginative without me needing to have some crazy understanding of it like music, poetry, or body language can be. Now, going off the trailer I admit I don’t have the highest of expectations going in - but that’s usually nothing but a recipe for success when it comes to watching a movie. Get your battle buddies together and prepare to compare it to other great movies you like, tonight we check out Osiris.
Soldiers are doing soldier things, fighting the local unspecified terrorist looking insurgent types. When they meet numbers way over their pay grade, they decide to call in some ordnance right on top of them to deal with it - only for the fighting to stop as everything turns red, a giant pillar appears from the sky, and turns the insurgents into a chunky marinara sauce. The giant space pillar then decides to abduct the soldiers, and we get treated to quick blasts of this and that. When they wake up, they find themselves fully kitted and covered in stasis goo, but really with no idea why they know the new things they know or where they are. A little exploring and finding some dead bodies and a chained up lady later, and we discover big monsterous alien creatures and the body count starts rising. It’s a straight forward story really, and it uses everything it sets up in pretty much exactly the manner you think it would - but considering I was sold on it with fighting aliens and a Linda Hamilton, I really didn’t expect or require too much plot, even if it does do a decent job of giving you stuff and answering a good portion of questions about a second or two after you decide to speak up about it.
Actors do a surprisingly good job. There’s some parts where you aren’t sure if a person even was acting or not - like when the comedic relief character says ow after getting shoved. Yeah, sure, maybe it’s not the most top notch award winning stuff but the plot, movie, and characters aren’t really demanding such. It’s also far better then what I was expecting, although at times could be just as corny. Some would be happy to know that it’s not as often an occurrence as I would have expected either - but just because it plays it mostly serious doesn’t mean it has no time for jokes and would-be military unit banter. You even get a little bit of acting out of the aliens - mostly just big and lumbering and hard to tell given so much of the face is lacking normal details, but the final battle does have a wonderful little alien smirk in there that had me chuckling over it.
When it comes to characters, there’s some stuff in here but nothing to advanced. Most the crew we don’t really get too know that much - heck, one dude doesn’t even make it to the alien ship. Some of them you might feel bad if they die because they seemed like a cool dude or something - but really the main solder gets “got a daughters picture with him” kind of character history building, and only the comedic relief guy gets to feel like he has any changes just because he’s got that Hudson from Aliens tier of swapping from antics to badassery. Certainly not a recommendation coming based on the characters alone - but they are suitable to at least get you wanting a few to survive and keep you moderately interested in whats happening, even if at times there might be some questionable calls in actions.
Soldiers doing soldier things
Setting is pretty decent, with plenty of corridors and stuff to check out after the initial streets battle against insurgents. Admittedly, at a point some of it is going to start looking very same-same, especially when one door has damages on it and you notice those damages when it’s in the background of a shot. For the most part though, it does a good job of giving you some variety while making the place feel massive. Expect plenty of greebles and shapes that call back to other things - which in all honesty happens quite a bit across a couple different departments here. Costumes are pretty good though - I mean, yes, the main human crew is all just modern military style attire, and falls into that “looks like nothing outside the normal” routine where you don’t even really think of it as a costume. This movie does, however, have aliens, and I’m pretty sure that there’s a good number of actual practical aliens pieces, if not full on suits given how they move and the lights all bounce on them. They look pretty good - although at one point I was laughing because I kind of got Super Mario Bros live action Goomba vibes from them, which did knock the menacing intent away some.
Effect wise there is a bunch as well. Besides the costumes going on, you’ve got all that gear you’d expect as well such as the guns. The alien guns look a bit prop-ish, if that makes any sense, but it looks fine regardless. The effects that go along with guns - the muzzle flashes and the impacts and the likes - are all good enough that it’s not obnoxious or too Power Rangers feeling, although that said there is plenty of sparks and some over-emphasized shoulder jerking to sell them. Violence is abound - and I wouldn’t say it’s all too often explicit in so much as just bloody. Granted, the pit might not exactly entirely sell you on it not being props, but it’s good enough to get the tone across in the scene, as is the classic skinned and headless bodies, predator style which do pop of a bit more often then the one pit scene. Maybe it’s a bit more graphic then I thought - but it still doesn’t feel as gross-out gorey as something like a zombie movie. I will point out that in the opening, when it’s still man versus man, there is an inside fight scene where things are just… weird. Like some kind of AI motion smoothing or something - I don’t know if it was just the ever possible Spectrum internet acting up while streaming, or if it’s actually the scene of the movie though.
Audio is fine, leading in with me making a comment about how those dang aliens stole our 50s music. Most the rest of the movie the music is lost from my mind as normal, although it helps fit the mood on screen with classic tension builders and the likes. Delivery is good, and balancing makes sure even in gunfights you’ll hear it. For the thinking folks, I honestly don’t know this time around. Maybe there’s something there about people should be friends not food, but really the best I can come up with and feel like I’m not just making something up is a off-hand comment about how maybe it’s not the best idea to send our location and biology information out into the cosmos and just expect it won’t somehow come back to bite us in the rears in a literal sense. I think the biggest complication for the movie might just be the fact that it’s going to really make you think about a bunch of other movies - like the two I mentioned already, Predator and Aliens. Sometimes it’s just how something or someone acts, sometimes it’s the costume setup - like our comedian having a pistol grip shotgun slung on his back (perhaps for some “close encounters” handiness?) or the bonds on our female lead when we first see her being remarkably similar to how we see an OG pred strung up in the movie Predators. Now, none of this is bad necessarily, but some folks might get distracted by these little details that feel more like fan nods of people who love those things and moved on to make their own stuff and instead wish they were watching those. For being on the box art, Linda also isn’t in the movie a ton - but don’t worry, she does a darn good job for what she is in (although I can’t speak for her Russian accent).
Aliens doing slasher villain things
Overall I expected some SyFy knock off grade movie going into this, and I got something a bit better than that to be honest. I had fun, and found myself enjoying the comedic side soldier probably the most out of anyone in the movie - which can be a hard thing to do sometimes as movies often overstep endearing and fall into annoying making you wish they’d just die and get out of the way. I won’t say that there is anything here that really feels like it’s completely original or unique, but I also feel like most of those connections it does have come from places of enjoyment and not just as money grabs. It had better effects and acting then expected, and feel like a good number of folks would probably have a good time watching this as an action/horror flick on the telly if it was on when they sat down - but also don’t think most would go and pay full theater price and feel the best about it these days unless it was a second run theater where the prices weren’t astronomical.