Spoiler alert
My rating: ***
Imdb link
Another collection of science fiction clichés, but enjoyable nonetheless. We have the usual group of scientists isolated in an Antarctic lab with an alien presence plus the requisite romance between two warring scientists who had previously fallen out but are forced together again by circumstances. Gabriel Byrne plays the standard role of the scientist who becomes hysterical and violent when things go wrong. The scientific language used by the scientists is satisfyingly high level and doesn’t try to dumb things down too much. There are a few departures from the clichés in that the aliens turn out to be only inadvertently harmful due to a pathogen they carry and at the end they carry the infected scientists off to their own planet thereby saving the world. James Spader in the main role looks like a young Christopher Walken but without the cold menace that the latter is able to exude.
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