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Arrival

Play trailer 1:00 Poster for Arrival PG-13 2016 1h 56m Sci-Fi Mystery & Thriller Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
94% Tomatometer 441 Reviews 83% Popcornmeter 50,000+ Ratings
Linguistics professor Louise Banks leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all mankind.

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Arrival

Arrival

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Critics Consensus

Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion and a terrific performance from Amy Adams.

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Critics Reviews

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Alexandra Heller-Nicholas The Blue Lenses 08/25/2018
Arrival transcends the limitations that so often govern the less creative examples of the subgenre, instead using it as a loose conceptual foundation upon which to build a theoretically-informed examination of what precisely ... makes us human. Go to Full Review
Kristen Lopez Culturess 11/20/2017
Arrival couldn't have arrived (pun intended) at a better time. Go to Full Review
K. Austin Collins The Ringer 08/10/2017
I think of Arrival in terms of color: the milky grays of the clouds rolling over the Montana plain; the bright blue of computer screens bouncing off the gray tents on the makeshift army compound. Go to Full Review
JD Duran InSession Film 08/08/2024
The film works as a powerful allegory for how we try to decode and interpret the tragedies of our lives. Go to Full Review
Ankit Ojha Cinema Elite 07/09/2024
4.5/5
Without spoiling too much, let’s just say Villeneuve and Heisserer use the Kuleshov effect to turn the non-linear storytelling of “Arrival” from a gimmick to an indispensable part of the film. Go to Full Review
Anthony McGlynn Vague Visages 02/06/2024
Arrival is a work that resents the necessity of violence. However, the film ditches some of the meditative qualities of the bleakness-to-idealism dialectic of the album in favor of making a cold hard stand against war and those who clamour for it. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Jonathan F 02/05/2022 Extremely short-paced, felt like most of the movie was empty without a real driving story. I would have hoped for more action. See more Katie D 03/15/2021 An amazing film! very well-done, thought-provoking, entertaining and unpredictable. my only complaint is about the loud horn blasts that accompany so many science fiction movie scenes - unnecessary, unrealistic and distracting! other than that it was awesome! See more TV D @TVDad1075 11h If you want a bunch of sci-fi battles, then this is not the movie for you. If you want a thoughtful exploration of how visitors from another planet may cause different countries to jockey for power, then I think you will like it. The beginning of the film successfully portrays the fear and mystery of an alien arrival. All the performances are great. It's a thought-provoking movie. See more Harish N @harish_napa 4d The 2016 film is a spectacular masterpiece that serves as a profound testament to the power of connection. It is a visually magnificent production that reimagines the first contact trope as an intellectual puzzle, proving humanity’s greatest tool is our ability to understand one another. Amy Adams is spectacular as Dr. Louise Banks, delivering a career defining performance that is both quiet and visceral. Jeremy Renner provides a brilliant and soulful anchor, while Forest Whitaker captures the friction between military and science. The writing is smart, focusing on the universal nature of language and grief. It is a high quality and essential experience that every human must witness. See more Harry F @RT86741986 Apr 28 A bit slow but very cool and thought provoking. Always love a good alien movie See more Emma D @RT06234479 Apr 20 Terrible and frustrating, the only good thing was the idea of someone trying to understand the aliens language, that’s it. The budget is cheap, the video, the sounds and the terrible green screen or whatever has been used to create any fake effect. And the frustrating part is that whenever it’s getting close to being good, you completely interrupt the scene and move onto the next one. Extremely unrealistic, when did Netflix become so cheap? Do you not have money to buy better movies? Please, do NOT waste your time watching this. See more Read all reviews
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Arrival

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Movie Info

Synopsis Linguistics professor Louise Banks leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all mankind.
Director
Denis Villeneuve
Producer
Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder, David Linde
Distributor
Paramount Pictures
Production Co
21 Laps Entertainment, Lava Bear Films, FilmNation
Rating
PG-13 (Brief Strong Language)
Genre
Sci-Fi, Mystery & Thriller, Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Nov 11, 2016, Wide
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
Jan 27, 2017
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 31, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA)
$100.5M
Runtime
1h 56m
Sound Mix
Dolby Digital