Review of Arrowhead (Alien Arrival)

By Dave B.

​Arrowhead (2017, currently on Netflix) is…well, I’m not entirely sure what it is. It’s definitely a science-fiction movie. I’d put money on that. But as far as what it’s about…it seems to be about a prisoner of war, Kye, who escapes a futuristic prison on an alien world. Kye is then recruited by rebels for a mission to save his father from execution at the hands of the same warlord who had imprisoned him. It’s at this point that what’s happening in the movie rapidly becomes unclear. What I’m certain of is that Kye finds himself stranded on an alien moon facing a threat of indeterminate severity and origin as he races against the clock to escape in time to save his father.

The best way that I can describe the plot is as if someone took a handful of sci-fi themes, threw them into a blender, and then allowed a slightly stupid child to arrange them in whatever order he or she saw fit. The film is confusing from its beginning to its end 99 minutes later. That’s a long time to be confused, but oddly, lack of coherent plot makes Arrowhead somewhat interesting. Attempting to understand what is happening and why makes the movie zip along.

In other respects, Arrowhead is pretty decent. The performances are solid, the CGI is ok, and the “twist” at the end doesn’t feel like a complete copout. Frankly, the movie could’ve been enjoyable if it had made more sense. Especially interesting is the movie’s conception of a symbiote that infers a form of immortality upon its host. But this and other concepts feel as if they are just thrown into the movie without much thought as to relate to each other. Arrowhead has a clear beginning and a clear ending, but everything between those two points is ill-defined.

I’m definitely not recommending this movie, mostly because I have no idea what I would be recommending. But I don’t want to dissuade potential viewers of this film too much, mostly for selfish reasons: You see, I’m making an appeal to anyone who has seen this movie to explain it to me because I feel that if I understood what it was about, I may have enjoyed it.

Rating: 4/10