Canada · 2018
Rated PG-13 · 1h 30m
Director Jason Stone
Starring Stefanie Scott, Théodore Pellerin, Saïd Taghmaoui, Kate Burton
Genre Thriller, Science Fiction
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A high school senior, Alex Lainey, has an encounter with mysterious lights that appear over her small town. She soon develops dangerous, supernatural abilities and turns to her childhood friend Sean Terrel. The authorities target them and a chase ensues as officials try to discover the truth behind Alex's transformation.
Try as I might, I just wasn’t all that invested in the fate of Alex and Sean or their own private close encounter with the third kind. Which is a shame as the filmmaker shows a keen flair for creating both an interesting visual and aural palette.
The Hollywood Reporter by Justin Lowe
Lacking the flash of big-budget blockbusters or the originality of a uniquely imagined world, First Light is left trying to make the best of overly familiar sci-fi themes.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Crust
Stone doesn’t explicitly ask the straightforward, big-picture questions you’ll find in a film like “Arrival.” But his attention to detail and character, and his ability to render those people in recognizable settings, is engrossing.
Apart from the uncommon notion that these mysterious visitors may actually mean us well, the film seems a little too comfortable with clichés, right down to the men in black who show up mid-movie to ruin everybody’s fun.