Movie Review: OSIRIS

Geek Girl Authority

26-07-2025

There's a lot to be said for nostalgia. With Osiris , writer and director William Kaufman and his team set out to transport audiences to the action-adventure sci-fi of the '80s and '90s. They ask the question, 'If aliens found and understood Voyager's Golden Record, would they come to Earth in peace?' Their answer is an emphatic 'NO.'
Instead, the aliens take the message of Earth's diverse life and cultures as a 'come and get us' invitation. Osiris 's story begins when they abduct a Special Forces unit led by Max Martini's Kelly. When the unit is inexplicably released from their stasis gel on board the alien ship, the fight is on to survive and escape. Image Credit: Samuel Birdsong Osiris
The film's title references the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead. He also symbolizes resurrection. Kelly and his team members are as good as dead after their abduction, but get an unexplained second chance at life. (Arguably, it's a third as they were about to call in a strike on their own site when the aliens abducted them.)
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It's a battle-heavy film, beginning with the unit mid-operation in a firefight with unspecified Middle Eastern-looking combatants in a decimated setting. With Martini, Michael Irby, and LaMonica Garrett making up half the team, they're leaning into authentic tactical tradecraft gleaned from their military training on CBS's The Unit and Paramount+'s Lioness. Image Credit: David R. Gaynes
Once awake aboard the alien craft, it continues into a series of prolonged battle scenes, albeit in much tighter quarters. (It's not worth wondering whether or not it's smart to be shooting so many bullets aboard a spaceship.) Along the way, they come across Brianna Hildebrand's Ravi, who is less than forthcoming about their situation. Her fight face and skills quickly win their respect, if not their trust. The Sarah Connor Effect
A lot of the film's pedigree as an alien-adversary-action-adventure rests on Linda Hamilton's involvement. Her character, Anya, a seasoned soldier and strategist, has spent decades evading the aliens on their own ship. Repeat: on their own ship . (That's not worth thinking too hard about either.) While she doesn't appear on-screen until nearly an hour into the film, she's quickly in charge of the unit. Or what's left of it at that point. Hamilton delivers a solid, if predictable, performance — strong, smart, takes no sh*t.
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The Osiris creative team invested a great deal of energy and talent into the practical effects for the aliens and the combat scenes. It's hard to learn more about the aliens since only one character can understand their language. And that's a shame. Not that we need to empathize with the predators, but I would've liked to know what their take on the Golden Record's contents was. What made Earth sound appealing and worth the trip?
On its most basic level, the plot may or may not have been inspired by the stinger scene in The Big Bang Theory Season 8 Episode 21, 'The Communication Deterioration,' but the added elements of the aliens' strategy for invasion and use of intermodal container shipping provide some interesting zest to the standard 'eat the people, take their stuff' playbook. With the final scene setting Osiris up as the first in a series, we can only assume Kelly and Ravi will find other survivors still fighting the aliens. It's by no means a safe assumption. Enjoy the Ride
Osiris leaves a lot of questions about the aliens, their invasion tactics, and their shipboard security painfully unanswered. The timeline of the film is still a little fuzzy, as is whether the aliens are just looking to hunt and gather or if they're colonizing to provide cattle for the homeworld. But if you're looking for a movie with very clear lines drawn between hunter and hunted, this is it. If throwing back to a time in sci-fi when resource management and hull integrity never even cross the mind turns your crank, you're in the zone. While it's not a movie that stands up to detailed scrutiny, Osiris is packed with solid action scenes, lots of alien conflict, and epitomizes the need to survive against all odds. Even when they're never in your favor.
Osiris premieres in select theaters and drops for streaming on Plex on July 25.
SDCC 2025: MIGHTY NEIN Gets Premiere Date; THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA Renewed for Season 5 Diana lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she invests her time and energy in teaching, writing, parenting, and indulging her love of all Trek and a myriad of other fandoms. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. You can also find her writing at The Televixen, Women at Warp, TV Fanatic, and TV Goodness.