Why Osiris (2025) Feels Like a “Meh” Movie—And Why William Kaufman Should Deepen the Story Instead of Skimming It
- At first glance, action, aliens, special ops, a gritty leader, and stars like Linda Hamilton showing up. The trailer promised the moon. The result? More of a crater than a rocket launch.
- The audience “Popcornmeter” score is around 51% on Rotten Tomatoes—basically a coin flip among viewers. Critics are only slightly less forgiving (Tomatometer ~50%).
- The action works at times (and yes, kudos for the combat sequences), but the film stumbles sharply whenever it tries to explain things. The plot does finally offer explanations—but too late in the process.
- Examples: The team wakes in pods, perfectly armed. They read alien glyphs and speak Russian-ish lines. These details only start to tie together once the “trophy room” explanation is dropped—but by then the momentum and viewer patience have drained.
- Kaufman is known for lean-budget action movies that deliver spectacle. And yes, spectacle is important. But when you go into the sci-fi/alien genre, the “why” matters. Viewers aren’t just buying bullets and monsters—they’re buying the world logic.
- It’s 2025. We’ve had decades of “alien war” or “abducted soldier” tropes. There’s no excuse for leaving the audience wondering, “Wait, why?” for too long. If the film is going to include weird puzzle pieces (loaded weapons, glyph-reading humans, memory jacks), it either needs to foreshadow them early or explain them swiftly. Instead, key revelations are buried past the midpoint. That drag kills curiosity and tension.
- If Kaufman spends just a little more time tightening the writing—tying up logic, clarifying the alien tech, grounding motivations—his films (even DTV/low-budget ones) could hit way harder with both fans and critics. The gap between “fun shoot-’em-up” and “memorable sci-fi” is often just a few meaningful story tweaks.
- In short, Osiris delivers on the thrills. But without the “why, when, and how” behind the thrills being delivered in sync with the action, it drifts into the meh zone. And that’s a shame—because the potential is clearly there.
Final Word
Osiris is a competent action movie. But competence is no longer enough when audiences sense every logic skip, every unexplained ship layout, and every mystery left hanging. If Kaufman wants his next film to be more than “okay fun,” time spent tightening the writing, pacing the reveals, and aligning spectacle with story will pay off. Because in this era, if you don’t explain the weird things early enough, the audience will—and they will not hesitate to roll their eyes.