Normalize making the entire movie interesting. “Osiris” (2025), an hour forty-four-minute movie, starts off like a mash up between “Predator” (1987), “The Fire in the Sky” (1993) and “Independence Day” (1996) then waits until the hour mark to deliver a riveting story that is well worth the wait, but for some viewers, may be too little, too late. Aliens interrupts and abducts an US Special Forces operation, who wakes up disoriented and trying to figure out what is going. Can Earth’s elite warriors make it out alive or will they become the main course?
If you are making a movie after “Warfare” (2025), do not bother to insert a firefight on foreign soil unless you can top Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s latest flick. Unfortunately, “Osiris” was probably made around the same time and after a neat orienting opening sequence set in outer space, it begins monotonous in an undisclosed location to introduce the unit, and that is roughly seven monotonous minutes of your life that you will never get back. It establishes that these men are a tight, unflappable team that work well together, but it could have been shorter or depicted in another way. Once on the ship, there are flashes of interesting moments, but the rest of that first hour is archetype city where the group of six men are getting up to speed on what we already know. They are dealing with aliens. Another note: suspense for the characters should not be conflated with suspense for the audience. That time could have been used to individuate the team, but at least two guys get picked off too quickly to get attached to, and the rest are just concepts with no names.
Now fans of the CBS television series “The Unit” will recognize the actors playing two of the men: Michael Kelly (Max Martini) and Reyes (Michael Irby). I pretended that “Osiris” was an unofficial sequel while waiting for more details about them. Rhodie (LaMonica Garrett) has a huge bushy beard and a smooth pate who appears to be the strongest badass in the group. Gibbs (David B. Meadows) is sadly forgettable though he provides one of the early clues regarding the aliens’ modus operandi, which will be detailed later. Jax (Jaren Mitchell) and Nash (Linds Edwards) are the most distinct in the crew with Mitchell getting to show off his singing chops in a heroic, memorable scene, and Edwards reliably providing comedic relief. Kelly has a daughter so naturally that makes him the protagonist and signals to the audience that these men are cool, not rapey, when they bump into a chained-up woman, Ravi (Brianna Hildebrand, who is best known as Negasonic Teenage Warhead from the “Deadpool” franchise). Anyone who is familiar with Mack’s storyline will not worry about that, but see him as a less paternal figure, but Kelly is less of a screwup than Mack so relax.
Ravi’s appearance leads to the trope of introducing a character that does not speak the same language as the men, which is supposed to ratchet up the tension of whether they will find common ground and work together or fight each other. Fortunately, “Osiris” does not linger too long on this tired narrative device though Ravi’s understandable initial alarm at a group of men trying to help her feels a bit racist when she coincidentally chills out when Kelly attends to her wounds instead of the Black guys, but let’s call it an unfortunate timing oversight that did not occur to cowriter and director William Kaufman. The remaining hour is basically aliens as roaring monsters that look a bit like Venom with practical effects. They are not that interesting so while the practical effects are impressive, it is always disappointing when the intelligence of the technology is not reflected in the aliens’ demeanor. There are two alien tech developments that look cool in the battles, and you will have to see the film to find out about them. Ravi spends zero time waiting to be a badass and fortunately spends minimal time being a damsel in distress. It is only theoretically interesting to watch this group try to evade aliens since most of the skirmishes are similar though one is staged to reflect the men’s ingenuity despite being at a disadvantage.
After the hour mark, “Osiris” gets interesting because the story gives these men more of a mission than survival and introduces the only reason that you wanted to see this movie: Linda f**king Hamilton! Another rule: stop using the most interesting character like a cameo and give them as much screentime as possible. Does Hamilton need an introduction? With all due respect to Martini, who do you want to see more of, Hamilton or anyone else in the cast? There is the trinity of Hollywood action heroines: Jamie Lee Curtis (“Halloween” franchise), Sigourney Weaver (“Alien” franchise) and Hamilton. If you are unfamiliar with their sacred texts, stop reading this review and immediately go to the fundamental films of their careers. Hamilton is famous for far more than the following, but her essential catalogue is as Sarah Connor in the “Terminator” franchise, The Mother of the Resistance against the machines long before AI. So no one is allowed to critique her Russian accent in this film. We will just give thanks The Mother is here.
Cowriters Kaufman and Paul Reichert save the best lines for Hamilton, and if she had appeared at the half hour mark, “Osiris” would be a better movie. Do not watch the trailer because it gives away the huge twist of the movie, and the mythology reflects that it is more innovative than the monotonous scenes that came before. The action is a lot of run down a hall, shoot and evade the scary alien. It is hard to get into the pure survival of concepts of people than actual characters. If the men had a mission earlier, it would create credible stakes, and Hamilton’s character, Anya, does the prose dump and commands them as she should. While executing her mission does not make the action more interesting to watch, it at least breaks up the stagnation.
More should have been done with the other human characters described as cattle and sleepers instead of most of the bloated boring hour. It also felt as if “Osiris” waited too late to show the characters one-on-one vulnerability when captured, and the terror of realizing that you are not the baddest of them all should have been longer for the most interesting characters instead of punctuation between scenes. There is one early scene, but it happens to a character that is just some dude to us. It is as if the film does not want to dwell on vulnerabilities, which would have made the movie more interesting.
The conclusion of “Osiris” definitely teases a sequel and pays homage to the end of a classic sci-fi franchise. If Kaufman and Reichelt can learn from their mistakes in the first film and build upon their successes, the sequel would be leaps and bounds better. While this movie takes too long to ramp up, it may be worth watching if you are the forgiving type who did not mind the action of the Eighties and grade on a curve.
Postscript:
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The alien space craft was on Earth. It is very “Planet of the Apes” (1968). So Earth can be saved, but the threat of other aliens coming is still possible though destroying communication helped. Good news: they don’t have to figure out how to fly an alien space craft. Bad news: the odds are not in their favor.
