Last weekend I decided to watch Arrival. I'd been seeing tons of short clips about the movie on YouTube and Instagram, and I felt like fate was telling me I absolutely had to see it, so I went looking for it. My wife and I got ready, bought some snacks, and sat down to watch it Saturday night.

The truth is, the movie completely captivated us and we thought it was fantastic, but in the end, it left us with a bittersweet feeling, as if the story hadn't quite finished. The movie starts off brilliantly because it's not your typical story of aliens coming to destroy the planet with over-the-top special effects. You're completely hooked watching them try to communicate using science and language. The whole atmosphere, the suspenseful music, and the mystery keep you glued to your seat.

The problem is that when it comes time to explain the biggest mysteries, the film opts for a more sentimental approach to family and abandons the science fiction explanations it had been promising for the previous two hours. What left us most ponderous, and a little frustrated, was the whole time travel thing. The idea that by learning the aliens' language you can see the future is beautiful in theory, but it doesn't make much sense when you think about it rationally. In the end, they use this "superpower" as an easy way to resolve a global conflict with a single phone call. You're left wanting a better explanation of the rules of this mental time travel, but the film prefers to ignore these logical questions to make you cry with the protagonist's drama. Furthermore, the aliens themselves end up being an unsolved mystery.

You spend the entire film watching them try to decipher their symbols, and when they finally succeed, the extraterrestrials vanish into thin air. They don't tell you what planet they're from, where they're going, or what their intentions are. They just drop the bombshell that they'll need humanity's help in three thousand years and then leave. It's a huge mystery that feels carelessly thrown out there, because they don't give you a single clue about what kind of problem they'll have or why they need us. In the end, the experience was worthwhile because it's an intelligent and very well-made film, but it leaves you with the feeling that the story was incomplete.

Denis Villeneuve creates such an interesting universe that had so much more potential, but he chose to wrap everything up by focusing solely on Louise's personal decision regarding her daughter. It's an emotional ending, sure, but it feels a bit like a trap to avoid having to explain all the loose ends they left hanging in space.