Osiris, 2025.
Written and Directed by William Kaufman.
Starring Max Martini, Brianna Hildebrand, LaMonica Garrett, Michael Irby, Linda Hamilton, Stanley White Jr., Tyler Galpin, Linds Edwards, Dawson Towery, David B. Meadows and Jaren Mitchell.
SYNOPSIS:
Special Forces commandos are abducted mid-operation by a mysterious spacecraft and, upon awakening, find themselves prey to a relentless alien race in a fight for survival.
Video game-y and punishingly generic, the alien invasion action flick Osiris attempts to explain the extra-terrestrial journey to Earth through a series of on-screen text graphics that are sped through and amount to nothing. It’s a struggle to remember what they said, specifically. Yes, I could fire up the screening link once again and check, but what’s more telling is that precisely nothing about writer/director William Kaufman’s film registers as something remotely interesting or worth remembering.
Following a military squad engaged in battle (most of the soldiers indistinguishable from each other) that plays out as flatly as watching your friend play a third person shooter as dull as possible, slowly moving forward while firing at enemies (this goes on for almost 10 minutes without any real set pieces in a movie that already has absolutely no business coming anywhere close to the 110 minutes it does), these soldiers are incapacitated and sucked into a spaceship.
From there, the same shootouts repeatedly occur, except this time the locale is confined to the same hallways, and now the enemies are aliens inspired by Halo, most evident when they start deploying plasma shields. It is also worth noting how lifeless it is to watch soldiers with the thinnest of characterizations (played by Max Martini and others) march down the hallways and shoot these aliens in the head. Defined by simplistic traits such as the jokester or bruiser of the bunch, there is certainly no reason to care whether they live or die. It is the antithesis of cinematic.
Regarding the plot, Max Martini’s squad leader, Kelly, and his team encounter Brianna Hildebrand’s Ravi, who has been held hostage by the aliens for a considerable time and possesses some information about their motives (Ssnce there is virtually nothing else to the story, I won’t spoil it). Her mom, played by the legendary Linda Hamilton, might still be alive on the ship. For the 20 minutes that she does come into play, even her presence (complete with a spotty Russian accent) isn’t enough to enliven the proceedings. Yes, no amount of adoration for Linda Hamilton is enough to recommend checking out Osiris.
During immense boredom watching Osiris, one begins to wonder if William Kaufman is just upset he was denied directing an episode of the Halo TV series, and decided to put together a filmmaking crew, trying (and failing) to make a point that he was the right filmmaker for the job. Admittedly, there are some satisfying gore effects, and, for a shoestring budget, the aliens themselves boast impressive makeup effects.
A limited budget doesn’t inherently spell doom for a movie featuring monsters or aliens (check out Shudder’s Monster Island for a stronger, if still flawed, example of this), but there is practically no imagination or pulse to Osiris. It’s akin to watching a video game from the 1990s come to life, which, in this case, is not a compliment.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder
