Arrival
Directed by Denis Villeneuve7.994%83%7.6
Linguist Louise Banks leads a team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors.
Arrival Ratings & Reviews
- HaHaHarvey44May 8, 2025What if aliens show up in giant obsidian coffee pods, and instead of nuking New York, they ask if we want to learn sentence structure? It’s a slow, thoughtful, brain-melting meditation on language, perception, and time, basically Independence Day for people who read books without pictures. Amy Adams is deciphering grief one inky Heptapod swirl at a time. These aliens don’t speak, they mist-blast entire concepts into the air like intergalactic Rorschach tests, and somehow it makes total sense. By the end, the twist doesn’t explode, it just lands in your chest like a memory you haven’t lived yet, quietly rearranging your understanding of time. There’s no war, no special effects show, just the terrifying realisation that communication might be the most powerful weapon, or gift, we’ve got.
- FenrisfilMay 3, 2026Overrated movie. To be clear, the core concept taken from the source novella is good and interesting. However the screenplay is abysmal. The movie is full of clichés and bad dialogue. In some places it is downright stupid. This is no Interstellar, Contact or 2001. It is a good idea badly executed. For a start, the civilian scientist that happens to be the most important person in the world being picked up by the government as the only person for the job is as sci-fi cliché as you can get. Now that alone isn't a deal breaker, but it's deployed in its most generic form. The military are one dimensional idiots. All the supporting cast are. The film explains things like how when they ask "What do you want here" they need to be able to differentiate between you as a species and the individual.... I'm pretty sure the aliens would know what was meant, not to mention that we're talking about a race far more advanced than us. This isn't an aboriginal tribe, despite Louise clumsy made up analogy. The plot is full of this kind of thing. Stuff said to try and sound clever and profound but that seems to not actually think through the situation. At no point do they look to examine why the aliens are acting like they do. They go "Well they don't seem to be tourists or scientists and that's about it". No one examines it because the focus is so completely on the language stuff to the point of you hit the "Don't ask questions, just consume" stage. This kind of thing wouldn't be as much of an issue except this is sold to us as a high brow science fiction. It really is not. Also the aliens look like hands. Sure, aliens can look like anything, but I can't stop seeing them as giant hands. Call that a minor issue! More of an issue is the complete lack of chemistry between really any cast member, but the two scientists that fall in love especially. But then no one here really has much of a personality, so hard to have chemistry. When Ian says his remark about language not being the cornerstone of civilisation at the start it felt out of place and just there to be a blunt plot tool. Obviously he'd be proven wrong by Louise's genius. The conclusion is cheesy. I won't spoil that part, but while it ticks the box for science fiction (Which many modern sci-fi's actually don't, so kudos there) it's still a bit cringe. Ultimately the movie is visually okay. Not stunning. Not amazing. Just reasonable. The core story is fine. But the rest is bad. I feel 2.5/5 is about right. I really don't get the Villeneuve hype. His Blade Runner sequel was bad too. Dune part two was hit and miss. Dune part one was good and Sicario was very good. But I'm seeing more disappointment than classics from him.
- M08YOctober 1, 2025Arrival is one of the more unique and interesting sci-fi movies in the last 10 years. I'll be entirely honest, I didnt think much of Arrival when I saw it in 2017, but rewatching it now I certainly can see it's merit. While hardly thrill-a-minute, Arrival does manage to make an engaging film out of what seems to be a fairly mundane idea. As it turns out, the idea of a language professor decrypting an Alien language is actually quite interesting. Not much actually happens in the film, but don't let that trick you into thinking it's boring. The audio and visuals were all spot on even if slightly uneventful. There is next to no spectable in Arrival.
- ርልዪረJuly 30, 2025This is a beautifully crafted piece of filmic art, slow moving shots through cleverly lit atmospheric sets, common sense editing within scenes giving the feeling that you are changing your own point of view to see what is happening. The development of the main character is handled so flawlessly well, you can understand her drives/reactions so quickly and fully very early within the film. And finally the music.The soundtrack is so essential to creating the feel of this film that without the lilting strings, prolonged chords, curious horn sounds and vocalisations, a vast amount of emotional content would not even exist. All of this tied into a truly novel concept with regards to why and how alien life contacts the human race results in a truly outstanding sci-fi experience. I recommend watching this alone or, if you are with others, suppress the urge to speak, because moving focus away from the subdued flow of this film will interfere with how deeply you can engross yourself in the content and potentially how it may affect you.
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Arrival Trivia
Arrival was released on November 10, 2016.
Arrival was directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Arrival has a runtime of 1h 56m.
Arrival was produced by Dan Levine, Shawn Levy, David Linde, Karen Lunder, Aaron Ryder, Dan Cohen.
Linguist Louise Banks leads a team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors.
The key characters in Arrival are Louise Banks (Amy Adams), Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker).
Arrival is rated PG-13.
Arrival is a Science Fiction, Drama, Mystery film.
Arrival has an audience rating of 8.3 out of 10.
Arrival had a budget of $47M.
Arrival has made $203.4M at the box office.