The Arrival (1996)

Film review #688

Director: David Twohy

SYNOPSIS: Zane Zaminsky, a radio astronomer at SETI, discovers a signal originating from a distant star, but when he reports his discovery to his superior, he quietly buries it and takes Zane off his job. Suspecting there is more to this than meets the eye, he continues to investigate on his own, unearthing a shocking discovery…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The Arrival is a 1996 sci-fi film. Zane Zaminsky (Charlie Sheen) is a radio astronomer working for SETI who discovers a radio signal originating from the Wolf 366 star fourteen light years away from earth. he takes the signal to his superior, who later destroys the tape and tells Zane he no longer has a job due to budget cuts. Zane however, doesn’t give up, and builds his own satellite array to record the signal, with the help of a neighbourhood boy. As he continues to be impeded at every turn, he begins to suspect that there is a wider conspiracy at large, and he continues to pursue the truth. The plot of the film is fairly interesting, and while nothing overly special, does have a bit of mystery and suspense to keep things moving along. A couple of twists round out the film to change things up a little, but the finale is a bit lacklustre that doesn’t resolve anything in any significant way. The first half of the film builds up some interesting mystery, but the second half of the film revealing the aliens and their plan is a bit underwhelming: this is common occurrence in thrillers though, where the mystery is more interesting than the reveal. Also, a lot of the issues that Zane faces could have been resolved if he had backed up his evidence on more than more tape.

A big issue is that any character that isn’t Charlie Sheen’s barely has a character arc and goes in and out of the story for long periods of time so that they aren’t involved for good portions of it. Sheen is perhaps not the most convincing of scientists, but is right at home in 1996 with the spiky hair and facial hair. Looking back on it, this film came out a month before Independence Day, and a year before Contact, based on Sagan’s novel. between the two films, the former being a blockbuster experience, the other being a smart slice of speculative fiction, there isn’t much room for The Arrival to stand out nowadays. The CG aliens are okay, but nothing special, and again, Independence Day really surpassed anything this film did in terms of effects. This is a decent thriller that keeps itself going and provides a few interesting twists, but lack of a real conclusion and wasted character potential makes it stumble on the way.