As usual I sat down to watch this without seeing any reviews. I like Tom Holland enough to take a chance on it... even though the "tags" on Netflix suggested it might be a "young adults sci-fi" which can be a bit of a minefield... and it has Daisy Ridley in it who I have only seen in a couple of Star Wars films (let's not get into that again).
Pre-spoiler summary: it's OK, but nothing to write home about.
SPOILERS
I quite liked the premise of this: on a New World colony everyone's thoughts can be heard and / or seen by everyone in the viscinity due to a phenomenon called "noise". When I say everyone, it's actually only males, but we don't know that because there aren't any females around.
Tom Holland portrays the torment of this situation really well. It would surely be a nightmare to be laid bare like that all the time. And not everyone is... some people can control their noise better than others. So there is an uneasy peace in the colony amongst the men.
Then a spaceship crashes, killing all the passenges except for one female, Daisy Ridley. She has no noise so the men want to capture her... or... actually they want to capture her before she tells the mothership to come and steal their land... or because half of them have never seen a female?
It's all a bit muddled. Which is fine. Life here is baffling and frustrating. The problem is that Daisy Ridley plays the same character she had in Star Wars, just without any force powers, which makes her not very interesting at all. Alongside a lesser co-star that might slide a bit, but against Tom Holland it's just clear she can't compete for impact... maybe the writers don't give her a a chance. I don't know, but the Viola and Todd conflict / dynamic felt very flat to me.
Despite that the film plays out OK. The story moves along, things happen, there are a few fights. Some of the fights make sense, a couple are cool, a few are really dumb (how did he get there?)
By the end I neither felt that I'd seen a great film nor a terrible one. I'm glad I watched it. I'll probably have a look at the original books. I wouldn't watch any sequels...
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