The crew of a space station, observing the planet Solaris, is experiencing odd and deadly occurrences. A psychologist is sent to determine the origin of the oddities and return the remaining crew safely to Earth; but he, too soon begins to have strange visions.

What appears early on as a slow to develop sci-fi psycho trip, turns out largely to be a never developing sci-fi anything. I liked the idea here, although it certainly isn't a new premise, it has great potential to be spooky and thought provoking. We see a little of the spooky; blood trails and tales of horrific happenings take place early in the script. But source of the scaries is vaguely (if at all) explained.

The meat of the script, however, is that the good doctor (Clooney) starts seeing an embodiment of his since dead wife, Rheya (McElhone). Not a vision, but a physical manifestation of her. Cool, right? As we learn a bit more (but never enough) about her, it becomes unclear if this is a reincarnation of Rheya or is she merely a product of the doc's memory? Can she think independently or is she consigned to react only as he thinks she would? Interesting, right? Perhaps the visions the two other crewmembers are seeing hold the answer to these mysteries? Perhaps, but we never learn anything interesting about the other visions. In fact, we learn nothing interesting at all. So none of this is answered. And here's the kicker Ð that's it. There's nothing else happening here. No good suspense a la Event Horizon. No cool aliens a la The Abyss. Can you believe there isn't even the stereotypical politician back on Earth trying to shut down the whole project!?

I can say that the actors all do well here. And Soderbergh's direction seems right for the film, but it's not much of a picture otherwise.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh.