I remember when the sequel to Prometheus was going to be named Paradise, Shaw's voiceover fresh in my mind: "...I am still searching." It was one of those sort of lines Damon Lindelof seems to really like writing. "Big things have small beginnings," etc. Nice and tidy, with implications of scope, even optimism, something one might expect more from Star Trek. Still, I found the idea of leaving this outpost where "only death" remained to seek out the Engineer homeworld…

"I feel like something bad is gonna happen to me. It hasn't reached me yet but it's on its way."

I kinda want to give myself a little slap on the wrist for this, but: if Twin Peaks were documentary-style found footage horror, it might be a bit like this. Its eye is maybe a bit less subtle than Lynch's, relying really heavily on slow zooms up to a grainy image where something tucked into a dark corner becomes clearer…

Demonlover 2, indeed. There was certainly a sense that Assayas owed to Verhoeven in terms of aesthetics and provocation — hentai and CGI porn essentially mimicking RoboCop's cuts to absurd commercials, or its frankness toward sexual taboo, among other things. This returns here via video game cutscenes, perhaps as a discreet reminder of the director we're dealing with — one who has been largely absent for more than 15 years, save for 2006's Black Book — cutting into a film…