The Osiris Child Is Better Than I Expected

By Dave B.

​You never know what you’re going to get when you decide to watch a relatively low-budget science fiction movie. There are some gems, but often you have to wade through a lot of trash to find them. The Osiris Child (2017, currently on Hulu) isn’t a gem, but it’s fairly impressive, nonetheless. In it, Kane (Daniel MacPherson), a lieutenant working for a military/commercial planet colonization company has his daughter move out to a frontier planet to live with him. Unbeknownst to him, the company has been conducting illegal genetic experiments on the planet’s prison population. When a riot breaks out at the prison, the experiments escape and begin massacring thousands of colonists. The company, fearing discovery of its experiments, decides to wipe out the entire colony, forcing Kane to defy his superiors in a race against the clock to get his daughter to safety.

​The Osiris Child has some weaknesses. Foremost among them is the pacing of the plot. There is just too much downtime where not much of interest happens. This might have been less of a problem for me except that most of the acting performances aren’t that great either and the dialogue is uninspired. The action is decent, but the story is relatively predictable. None of these issues make the movie unwatchable, but they occasionally make the movie feel longer than its 99 minute runtime.

​What's most impressive about The Osiris Child is how it looks. Visually, it could almost have been a movie studio’s flagship summer blockbuster. I have to give a ton of credit to the CGI team. The limited release of the film implies a limited budget, but they really pulled out all of the stops. The movie also engages in non-linear storytelling to a degree. In fact, it’s pretty much a straight rip-off of any Tarantino movie, but I enjoyed it. It was done well enough that it felt like a creative way to answer questions that would otherwise have gone unanswered and it helped keep the main storyline from becoming too stale.

Overall, watching The Osiris Child was an unexpectedly pleasant experience. A movie like this makes one realize that science fiction movies don’t require huge budgets to be entertaining. The genre just needs a unique perspective and some competent execution (something a company like Netflix hasn’t learned yet, but I digress). I recommend this movie if you like science fiction and if you don’t mind that the visual experience of watching it is somewhat more impressive than the mental one. 

Rating: 6/10