Overview
A college student, who sees a UFO, uses his exceptional math skills to investigate the sighting with his friends while the FBI follows closely behind.
The title of this movie is rather unimaginative, so one hopes the movie itself has something more creative to offer. And it does to some extent, but not much unfortunately.
Derek is a supposedly brilliant student who is failing his classes as he gets obsessed with what he believes to be UFO sightings. These sightings are, according to his clever math, being covered up for some reason, and Derek is hellbent on finding out what is really going on. Along the way gets some help from his friends Natalie and Lee, who he in return manages to let down in his obsession; he has a similar don’t-give-just-take relationship with his teacher, professor Hendricks. His obsession leads to slow but steady progress towards finding out the truth.
I didn’t find it to be a boring movie. Even though it is pretty slow, Derek’s obsession keeps things moving. A lot of the plot is based on Derek’s supposed brilliance as a mathemagician; but the actual math deployed varies from simplistic secondary school triangulation jumping to some incomprehensible universal constant that explains everything – except that how it is used in the movie makes very little sense, but I won’t elaborate so as to avoid any spoilers.
The acting is ok; Alex Sharp plays a consistently obsessed, selfish and stubborn Derek; Gillian Anderson is safe but bland as Professor Hendricks; Ella Purnell is actually the most watchable as Natalie; and David Strathairn is solid as FBI agent Ahls, but his part is too small to carry much weight unfortunately.
Something to consider watching on a rainy Sunday when there is nothing better on.
★★½
