Risen (2021) - I'd rather the human race gets wiped out by aliens than watch this again

Oh, dear, where to begin.  There's a trend in modern Hollywood films to make everything totally comic - even moments that are supposed to be serious (Marvel films, I'm looking at you).  However, if ever there was a 'yin' to that particular 'yang' it would be summed up by 'Risen' - the slowest alien invasion film I've ever witnessed.

Okay, so not every alien invasion should be action-packed like 'Independence Day.' I've seen plenty that are slower and more thoughtful - and just as enjoyable.  However, this one is just too damn sombre and serious for its own good.  The characters just walk around looking like they're going to the gallows.  I get it - it's an apocalyptic type of film and you don't want gags every other line, but this is just soooo damn serious, I can't use the word 'serious' enough.  

The film isn't short either - nearly two hours.  You can pretty much skip the entire first hour.  A meteor crashes into a small American town killing the thousand or so inhabitants.  Only the victims 'rise' soon after, meaning much of the hour is spent peering at them in hospitals through windows, then followed by people talking about what to do or what they've seen.

The 'aliens' first take the form of the 'black goo' from 'The X-files' which hasn't really had a starring role since 'Prometheus' so it's nice to see it make a come-back here, but it would have been more heartening to see it pick a better role than in this.  You get long drawn-out scenes of silence where you can effectively use your remote control to send these into 2x or 4x speed, just to get them out of the way.  Then, the 'aliens' progress into their own form of human with really cheesy blue contact lenses in and they too just stand there, staring.

I guess the film is supposed to be deep and meaningful and the ending sort of reminded me of 'Interstellar' - and I didn't really 'get' either of the endings.  Only that in 'Risen' it had some of the worst CGI explosions I've seen in a long time.

I know this is supposed to be deep, gritty and realistic - and having films like that are fine (even a nice break from the wise-cracking commercial output), but if all that means is that you're left with 'dull and boring' then I guess I'll take witty one-liners over this bore-fest.  Oh, and I love it how the film is so cheap it can't even use the 'Google' name when filming a character using a very familiar search engine!

4/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)