The first thing that must be said is that this is science fiction, not science fantasy. If you are looking for light and easy escapist fair, give this a big miss.
This is not an easily accessible movie, its a movie where you, like the protagonist, are constantly trying to put fragmentary pieces together into a coherent story. Your struggle in your seat to understand what you are seeing parallels his struggles both to understand and to escape. This makes it a very powerful movie but not an easy movie to watch.
The film-making here is just top-notch. Done in a muted almost black- and-white pallet it feels brooding and claustrophobic. All of the camera wok is hand-held, but don't worry if "Blair Witch" or "Cloverfield" made you ill, this is mostly steadicam work and thus much less shaky.
When the french do science fiction, it always has a strong sense of style and this film certainly qualifies. In this case the style is organic mixed with decaying technology. Sort of Alien-esque in the depths of the earth. The feeling of entombed-ness actually makes it more claustrophobic then Alien was.
As many others have commented, something about the film-making ends up "feeling" much like a video game, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing for a generation who has grown up on this kind of story-telling. While it may feel a touch unnatural to some of us older folks, I suspect it works well for its primary audience.
All in all, this is a fine movie with a bit of a relevant social allegory to it. You may not understand absolutely everything that you see, but if you are willing to work at it a bit, it will heavily engage you and leave you with things to think about.
This is not an easily accessible movie, its a movie where you, like the protagonist, are constantly trying to put fragmentary pieces together into a coherent story. Your struggle in your seat to understand what you are seeing parallels his struggles both to understand and to escape. This makes it a very powerful movie but not an easy movie to watch.
The film-making here is just top-notch. Done in a muted almost black- and-white pallet it feels brooding and claustrophobic. All of the camera wok is hand-held, but don't worry if "Blair Witch" or "Cloverfield" made you ill, this is mostly steadicam work and thus much less shaky.
When the french do science fiction, it always has a strong sense of style and this film certainly qualifies. In this case the style is organic mixed with decaying technology. Sort of Alien-esque in the depths of the earth. The feeling of entombed-ness actually makes it more claustrophobic then Alien was.
As many others have commented, something about the film-making ends up "feeling" much like a video game, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing for a generation who has grown up on this kind of story-telling. While it may feel a touch unnatural to some of us older folks, I suspect it works well for its primary audience.
All in all, this is a fine movie with a bit of a relevant social allegory to it. You may not understand absolutely everything that you see, but if you are willing to work at it a bit, it will heavily engage you and leave you with things to think about.