On a cross-country road trip, three MIT students (Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke and Beau Knapp) stop off in Nevada while looking for an enigmatic hacker and end up incarcerated at a secret governmental facility. It seems they may be infected by an alien life-form, according to Laurence Fishburne from inside his protective suit, but can they trust those dead eyes? This cerebral, stripped-down, and mostly low-tech sci-fi movie shares aesthetic DNA with some of the new, indie-style contributions to the genre from directors like Neill Blomkamp (more District 9 than Chappie), Gareth Edwards (Monsters) and above all Shane Carruth (Primer, Upstream Colour). That means credibly geeky dialogue, and more emphasis on suspense, character and sterile white corridors while the synths shimmer in the background than the kind of action-movie manoeuvres favoured of tentpole sci-fi. Sadly, this flubs the landing with a banal and credulity-stretching finale that feels like a bad Twilight Zone episode, but the first hour or so is terrific.
