The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One

Maybe it was a misreading of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, or a misguided fondness for ABC's Lost, but at some point, screenwriters made up a shitty narrative rule that says that if something interesting is about to happen, hard cut to a flashback. Such is the case of The Osiris Child, a series of scenes that cut away from interesting developments to flashbacks with a vengeance, as though "interesting developments" killed director Shane Abbess' dog.

A prison riot leads to the release of genetically engineered monsters on a distant planet, and spaceman Kane Sommerville (not the film's most ridiculous name) must break a quarantine to save his young daughter, assisted by escaped convict Sy Lombrok (there you go). The story is cut into "chapters" with breaks occurring the instant before a scene can achieve some kind of emotional or narrative beat.

The exasperating villains, including Rachel Griffiths as a space bureaucrat and Temuera Morrison as the space warden of space prison, give a lot of cold, indifferent speeches about evolution, perseverance and survival at all costs—bad-guy word salad like, "Don't fight it, don't fear it. Allow yourself to be the manifestation of the monster that I know lives inside your soul." Sweet Jesus, this movie.

But if there's one thing aspiring filmmakers can take away from The Osiris Child, it's this: Jules and Vincent talked about the quarter pounders of Amsterdam 23 goddamn years ago. We've been milking narrative nonlinearity for basically a quarter-century, and now its withered old teats are dry and squirting dust into the bucket. In 2017, telling a story contiguously from beginning to end would be edgy as fuck, the absolute spearhead of avant garde cinema.