Review of Arrival (2016) by Karla A — 18 Feb 2017

I am completely clueless on how this movie gets such high ratings. Is there something I am missing? It honestly is almost unwatchable.

The movie starts out with a few flashbacks involving this main character and her daughter - no explanation of who she is - what happened to her daughter - why there is no husband(or significant other) - you know the normal things that make you connect with a character.

Then all of a sudden - some government/military guy is coming to whisk her off to talk to aliens based on the fact that she once translated some Farsi for them? Jesus - it's just nonsense. After 40 minutes I turned to my husband and asked - are you getting ANYTHING out of this movie?

Nope - not at all. I can suspend belief fine when I can at least connect with the characters so I care about them - but I could have cared less about anyone in this movie. And the way it is shot is all fuzzy and dark - so you have even less idea what is going on. Anyway - enough said I guess . I continue to be disappointed that filmmakers think packing visual effect into a movie makes it better than bothering to make us care about the characters.