Why'd you pick this one? SF/Horror? Johnny Depp? It got such bad reviews and didn't seem too interesting in the first place, so I stayed very far away.

My reasons:

1. Sci-fi Horror genre. I never pay attention to reviews for them. Look how butchered De Palma got for the okay Mission to Mars. You'd think it was Ishtar/Gigli. Often the movies have some redeeming value the reviewers overlooked. Not here, sadly.
2. Netflix makes it easy.
3. Johnny Depp -- I'll always give his stuff a try. He phoned this one in from far away.
4. Charlize Theron (still undecided and giving her the benefit of the doubt). She was so atrocious in this that either she is really that bad or she put too much trust in a director who betrayed her.
5. Sci-fi Horror genre. I never pay attention to reviews for them.

The dialog is so ridiculously bad in this movie that I'm shocked it every got a greenlight. It was an excercise in pretentious and obvious metaphor, direct and non-subtextual dialog, simplistic characters with little motivation, and non-frightening moments of tension.

Some of the visuals were okay, but not enough to wate your time with it. It's essentially a Rosemary's Baby remake. I'll bet the log line was:

Rosemary's baby meets Contact and the Right Stuff.

Let's not forget the hilarious shock ending. (Or should we?)

Hey Steve,

No doubt, the ending was...um, well.

Yeah. Totally.

Anyway, thanks for the post. I'm glad I'm not the only one that Kent outsmarted by skipping this one!

Well, I'm in the same boat with you in regards to sci-fi/horror and their general critical disdain (hell, I even liked "Ghosts of Mars")... but there are times when the critical mas is right. This was one of those times. Yecch.

Ghosts of Mars! Yay! Join the club, Steve.