I just found it boring. Schlocky and boring. Twenty minutes of unnecessary exposition in the beginning (truly, they could have tossed everything before David running around on the ship and no one would have noticed), characters I couldn't bring myself to give a shit about...

Oh, and let's not forget the numerous times they treated the audience like blithering idiots. "He cut me off!" Yes, he cut the feed on his camera, we all saw it happen three seconds ago, and we don't need you to narrate it to an empty room for us. It was overacted, underwhelming, and a complete failure at provoking anything but indifference.

Who cares if the movie calls it an abortion or not? OMG it's a total act of studio cowardice! What else is new?

And the whole seeding life is just a metaphor for the concept extra-terrestrial origins of primitive life (a microbe-packed meteor for example), a theory that has not been completely discarded yet. Given that it's basically a sci-fi fantasy movie, I don't see taking a mythic shortcut as that big of a big deal.

Spoilers?

@10: I don't know what was on those pens she kept injecting herself with, but I doubt it was insulin...

Has Paul Constant been sniffing paint thinner?? This movie was NOT a treatise on existentialism. That's an insult to existentialism. The reason that you walk away from this movie going, "what the fuck did I just watch??" is because it's a crappy, poorly written and even more poorly directed film.

Exhibit A) an archaeologist finds yet another ancient picture of a person pointing to four balls. Conclusion: we've found our makers! (what! huh? how so! The conclusion is SO illogical that the writer skips that whole, "this is what lead us to our conclusion" speech).

Exhibit B) the same archaeologist after having thoroughly contaminating the site (she must not be a professional) carbon dates the dead bodies at 2000 years old. Her conclusion is that "this verifies our thesis statement - these guys are our makers!" Um, they're carbon dating the aliens in the year 2093. So, these guys created humans during the height of the Roman Empire? (Don't tell the Romans this, THEY thought that they were the center of the universe.)

Exhibit C) The alien in the picture isn't even pointing to home planet balls - just some random out of the way planet no where near their home planet.

These are just superficial nits - there are so many plot holes and unanswered questions you could drive a truck through them.

This gal pretty much covered them (read it and tell me I'm wrong):
http://m15m.livejournal.com/23209.html

Now, when I say unanswered questions, I don't mean "LIFE'S big questions" I mean just basic plot questions. Even existentialist movies have to make plot sense. Plot is the how of the movie - how does this thing lead to the next thing (character motivation, chronology, inner logic set up by the premise of the movie), existentialists are debating the WHY of the movie (why'd he shoot that man? we'll never know). Witness the Vanishing - an actual existential movie (they even quote Camus). That movie DID make sense plot-wise, you just never find out WHY the bad guy of the story did what he did. Plot is about story chronology there aren't existential philosophers debating how things happen, just, when they happen, whether or not those events mean anything.

You can't call a story existentialist just because it didn't make any sense (or any of its plot points don't go anywhere - even in the Vanishing the plot points actually DO go somewhere!!). This makes existentialists look like drooling idiots (I can't quite figure out how make one thing follow the next so I'm just going to say that nothing means anything and nobody'll notice that I can't figure out basic logic).

But, and here's the kicker, this ain't even an existentialist flick: the main character (the vehicle of the film and therefore the perspective through which we are looking at the film's theme) is the one with faith in a god, the reason they go to the planet is to FIND humankind's meaning. And here is another way in which the movie fails miserably: you can't figure out who the main character is (a pretty fundamental thing that even a mentally average ten-year-old can tell you) until you see the last man standing, because the movie fails to show who is driving the story, that is until there's no one else left to do the driving. This probably explains why I spent the entire time thinking, "what is the point in all of this? Why are we here (in this part of the story, or for that matter on the alien planet)? What is supposed to be accomplished? I can't tell!"

Yeah, this movie attempts to tackle the big questions by skimping on the basics: plot, character and storytelling. With those things lacking, the theme just dissolves under a muck of gooey and muddle-headed mess. The movie doesn't start until the last three minutes of the film when the "last man standing" finally decides to do something, by then it's too late. If the Stranger made any sense they would not call this existentialist, or call it a good film, or put it on it's recommends list (I want my 11 fuckin' dollars back, Stranger!).