Osiris opens in select theaters and is available on VOD on Friday, July 25.
Fusing the commandos-versus-extraterrestrials chaos of Aliens with the craptastic space-industrial aesthetic of the first Doom movie, Osiris marks a pivot for B-action director William Kaufman. His previous shoot-'em-ups, while derivative, were at least grounded in tone: 2011’s The Hit List is a shameless Collateral riff, while 2023’s The Channel copies Heat and The Town. Osiris, like Kaufman's 2016 zombie thriller Daylight's End, ventures into more fantastical terrain, this time an unimaginative sci-fi jumble that pits a grizzled Special Forces unit against man-eating monsters from beyond the stars. And while I can usually appreciate the earnestness of the director’s overwrought run-and-gunners, trying to harness the genre brilliance of James Cameron (going so far as to draft the performer behind his most iconic character) is a bridge too far.
Osiris follows a crew of rifle-toting grunts who are first seen shooting their way through an anonymous foreign enemy on Earth before being abducted in a flash of crimson light. Once they awaken from embryonic pods aboard an alien ship, the team grapples with strange and inexplicable new memories and abilities. Their leader, Kelly (Max Martini) suddenly speaks Russian, which proves handy once they bump into Ravi (Brianna Hildebrand), an inscrutable Russian stowaway who serves as the film's primary exposition device.
Between the Kaufman specialty of kinetic, overindulgent shootouts, Kelly, Ravi, and the squad pause for downtime in convenient hiding spots aboard the ship. There, they establish backstories and forge sudden, unearned bonds, like Kelly and Ravi's quasi-father-daughter connection. Time that might be better spent mounting a defense or losing their minds is instead occupied by dreary blasts of play-by-play concerning the basic thrust of the story. What are the aliens after? Ravi: "A meal." Why did they come to Earth? "We rang the dinner bell," says fellow Russian Anya (Linda Hamilton, in a thankless extended cameo), referring to the Voyager probe intercepted by the aliens – a grimmer conclusion to NASA’s deep-space exploration mission than the one offered by this summer’s Elio.
If you haven't set your brain on autopilot by the first few minutes of Osiris, you might have a rough go of it. Still, there is morbid fun in picking the movie's logic to bits. For instance, why do space aliens leave deadly weapons lying around if they can be insta-killed by them? If Ravi and Anya have survived onboard for years, as they say, what have they been living on? Space rats? Do they hydrate by collecting condensation from the walls? And if these creatures are man-eaters, why obliterate their prey with high-powered cannons?
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