5th Passenger (2017)

An escape pod from one of a series of ships transporting some of humanity to a new world is discovered with only one survivor, one of the navigation officers. And she's comatose. Fortunately the ability to see a person's memories by slapping a pair of fancy blue goggles on someone's face exists, so we and the rescuers, can maybe learn what happened.

OK, so one thing that nags at me throughout this movie is that, even though we're allegedly seeing Lt. Miller's memories of the events, we often see Lt. Miller herself. As though we're actually seeing the memories of some 6th, invisible, passenger who was in the pod.

Now, it is pointed out or alluded to by more than one character that memory is not an ironclad thing. People remember what they want to, and memories are affected by perception. This, as you no doubt have guessed, factors into the answer to what happened. That said, it still bugs me that Lt. Miller's memories are to involve her being apart from herself.

The movie has the grounds for a good pressure cooker atmosphere, full of tension and frayed nerves. Earth seems to have been divided into "citizens" and "non-citizens." The latter aren't excluded from the ship - Lt. Miller, the livestock herder and the doctor on the pod are all in that category - but they're treated essentially as slaves or tools. Their uniforms even have a label on the sleeve that states "non-citizen". The two citizens expect them to be silent unless spoken to, and are indignant at the notion of even sharing an escape pod with "roaches", as one of the two describes them. The pod was also only supposed to hold 4 people, so they have less oxygen and food stores than expected. And Lt. Miller's pregnant with the livestock herder's kid (though he doesn't learn that until halfway through.)

Like I said, there's some fertile ground here, especially as Miller appears the only one with skills that might save them once the pod is sent off-course. But then they find another, damaged, pod, and it seems like there was an experiment on-board, and now it's on their pod, and it's almost Baby's First Alien flick. The addition of a monster doesn't entirely sabotage the social strata friction, but it looks so fake and so goofy it does a fair bit of damage. The writing doesn't help either. Lots of, lines that are clumsy attempts to provide exposition, plus some acting that thinks putting extra emphasis on every word creates extra emotion, too.