Cosmic Sin (2021) - Movie Review

With some movies that I write about on here, I worry about falling into a common trap with people writing about media: Explaining the plot. Specifically, just reiterating what happens without adding any of my own observations into the mix. As I’m still regaining my sea legs after my break, I’ve been worrying about this with my last couple reviews. But thankfully, there is no chance of that happening with this one. Mainly because reciting every detail of the plot would require me to understand what in the blue-crystal fuck was going on in it.

From what I can gander, this is a sci-fi action flick about a first contact situation, where an alien parasite race crash-lands on Earth and humanity reacts to it. However, unlike something like Occupation: Rainfall or even the Mass Effect series, it tries to make a point about the ruthlessness of war and the ethics of genocide, but stacks the deck to make it as insultingly straightforward as possible. It presents Bruce Willis’ “Blood General” as someone who lost his rank for dropping a Quantum Bomb (because it’s the future, and everything has to be Quantum; it’s like the ‘90s all over again) and killing millions of rebels in the process… but then the script makes the alien race so transparently e-vile that the question of genocide is less a debate and more a ticking clock to completion.

That’s what the title refers to, by the by, and get ready for shitty writing because this is some prime stupid real estate. The ‘Cosmic Sin’ is the act of genocide against an alien species, described in-universe as a “thought experiment” in a psych student’s thesis paper, which in turn becomes the M.O. for the soldiers in the story. That is the perfect representation of how little forethought went into this writing, as it quickly devolves from quasi-zombie alien soldiers invading Earth to humans base-jumping (oh, sorry: Quantum-jumping!) into another world’s atmosphere to find… something. I think they’re looking for the aliens’ planet of origin, but beyond that, it’s just a massive blur of crappy costume design, far-from-alien-looking location shots, and actors like Willis and Costas Mandylor looking so tired and defeated that what little can be made out is depressing, and not even for reasons of plot. This might as well have been filmed on an ice cream sandwich for all the difference it makes.

From the ordinary-ass text on black background introduction (which is doubly sad when this is where most of the world-building resides) to the comatose conclusion, this makes for a special combination of incoherent, dull, and so simplistic as to softball genocide just so the audience doesn’t have to ponder anything. Beyond the lacklustre shoot-outs, the non-existent characterisation, the laughable attempts at showing humanity’s future, and some of the most try-hard dialogue I’ve heard in quite some time (like when a soldier’s reaction to possible death by black hole is “Being sucked off by the universe isn’t the worst way to go”), the fact that it’s such an unrepentant time-sink makes me feel bad that I even bothered to watch it. It does nothing, says nothing, makes the audience feel nothing, and both the filmmakers and the audience couldn’t give less of a shit about any of it.