Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There was a time when movie makers treated their audience with respect and maturity, they took time to tell a story and really flesh out their characters; this movie does that and so much more. This movie follows the "show don't tell" mentality decently well and the twist at the end will really hit home. The power of choices, relationships, and the story's unique take on Aliens coming to Earth are all fresh and well executed. You'll love this movie for the emotion it invokes, storytelling, and VFX (out of this world, pun intended). Worth the watch

As for the negative reviews, them seem to be focused on the fact that this wasn't an Independance Day type Alien movie or they don't seem to grasp certain concepts that they didn't learn in school. The movie was brilliant but it can only be appreciated by those who are willing to sit back and actually watch the movie without getting hung up on arbitrary facts (its Sci-fi). The plot was really good and the twists and turns left you surprised, and the ending left the viewer in a good spot.

It's a scathing indictment of Humanity's primal survival instincts and how they inherently begin to work against us, contained within a story that forces the mind to do just the opposite: remain vulnerable. I love it. Those who dislike this movie are, in a sense, exactly the ones that it calls out: those with preconceptions with which they are unable to part.

When it comes to the likes of big-budget SyFy films such as 2016's "Arrival" - IMO - Hollywood definitely needs to make 2 separate versions of the same story. They really do.First there'll be this PG-13 version here. It'll be the one for all of the naive, undemanding, little kiddies out there who have no real expectations about what's what. Yeah. This'll be the version that's guaranteed to keep the tiny tykes quiet and relatively satisfied for a couple of hours.And, then there'll be the adult version of "Arrival" for us grown-ups. And it'll be the one that really gets the viewer thinking about the potential reality of an honest-to-goodness, real-life alien visitation where the story doesn't have one saying "WTF!!??" about every 5 minutes like this version did.'Cause - Believe me - When it comes to being a "thinking" adult - I, pretty much, sum up this version of "Arrival" as being the biggest, the loudest, and, yes, the stinkiest of SyFy farts ever, from this past decade.I ain't kidding.I mean - This one's aliens looked so idiotic that they were downright laughable to me.... So - Like - When is Hollywood gonna give me a break from all of this PG-13 nonsense? Eh? When?