Critics reviews

Cahill is a wiz at amping up dramatic portent in the moment, but any pathos is undermined by his characters' regression into ciphers. Lines like "I didn't ask you what you thought, I asked you how you felt" state aloud what need only be implied, until Ian and Karen resemble less molecular biologists than audience members commenting on their own emotional whiplash.

You never stop feeling Cahill working to get the movie someplace profound. But it skates on a rigorously pretentious lake of pseudo-science. Stud-shouldered leather jackets, lab-bound lovemaking, the streets and apartments of Williamsburg, Brooklyn: This is a fashion magazine's impersonation of academic wonder.

The filmmaker's plotting is still deeply simplistic: Once you've solved the mystery, there's little to do but wait for Pitt's stubborn rationalist—whose certainty, the film helpfully, constantly reminds, is another form of dogma—to catch up. This is arted-up twist cinema at its most self-important, building to an ending that's designed to blow minds but doesn't pack any of the emotional wallop it should.

Persuasive sci-fi tech talk, soulful romance and an earnest stab at metaphysics combine in director Mike Cahill's polished second feature (after 2011's similarly themed Another Earth)... It's a mark of Cahill's improving command of pace that his first hour feels comparable to David Cronenberg's flirty, ominous remake of The Fly, with a killer turning point involving a massive research breakthrough and a tragedy on the same day as Ian and Sofi's wedding.