Loved the opening sequence. Loved Daniel Kaluuya's performance. Loved the almost Tarantino-esque backstory behind Steven Yeun's character. Loved Brandon Perea as the conspiracy theory Fry's employee and Michael Wincott as the auteur cinematographer, who both are worthwhile sidekicks to the Haywoods. I was a little less enthused with Keke Palmer's character, although her frustrating qualities were mostly intentional and therefore well performed. Regarding the plot, while I was totally on board for the ride, I didn't end up loving the way things played out in the end. The movie tries to set up and pull off a big reversal/reveal ([spoiler]the fact that it was an alien animal rather than a UFO[/spoiler]), but it didn't really work for me because: (1) it felt contradictory to what we had already learned ([spoiler]how does an animal generate a cloud that holds **perfectly** still? And how does it knock out all electricity? Definitely sounds like something tech based, not organic[/spoiler]); and (2) it just didn't seem to practically matter all that much to the story, with the attempts to thematically tie things together coming across as superficial/forced ([spoiler]i.e. the whole taming/breaking discussion and the idea that not looking at a creature that doesn't even have discernible eyes would somehow change its behavior[/spoiler]). This carries over into the spectacle/visual reveal during the finale, which also fell flat for me. When something is so out of left field that that audience couldn't possibly have predicted it, then the specifics start to matter less and less.

All of that said, I still had a good time. The filmmaking is expectedly excellent, and while the storytelling decisions didn't all land for me, they were still well executed, with plenty of highlight moments.