Supernova... hmm, a title like that conjures up images of a ship rushing out to escape a star about to esplode, while some alien artifact terrorizes the crew and the usual greedy human makes life generally difficult for everyone involved. Images of trying to escape back to Earth only to have said alien device try and follow them along their jump-trail and threaten Earth with a nova of it's own!

Well, that's the way I would havew written it. The unfortunate truth is far lewss exciting. Yes, there's an alien device- of whose purpose and use are unexplored, whose presence is almost incidental, and just sits there while the rest of the movie goes on. After using the alien gizmo as an excuse for why things happen, the rest of the film revolves around the usual maniac on a killing binge; an act made all the easier by a crew that continually misses the obvious.

What do I mean? Well, let's start listing them. One, when rescuing someone, if that someone looks suspicious then he probably is. Two, don't touch unkown alien objects- at all. Three, who's the guy that gave a stranger computer access? Restrict his computer access to nothing and half of his rampage immediately stops. Considering it's a military mnedical ship you'd think their quarranty and security precautions would be a bit more stringent.

This film would have been far more exciting if they'd done something with the alien device, or for that matrter done anything. But wait, isn't the film titled Supernova? Apparently the writers nearly forgot this fact. The supernova part actually manages to show up in the last five minutes of the film. Alien device goes boom, causes the local star to supernova (not the original reason they were trying to get out of there, but we need to work in the title), and oh by the way the device's explosion is self perpetuating and will reach Earth in 51 years... despite the fact that it's over 3000 light-years away and exploding at space-normal speed (read as: try 30,000 years to reach Earth, minimum). Not exactly the most well thought out plot; it had some potential, but they missed it.

This is one of those films that ends up on my Cheesey Scale. Wth some mildly entertaining moments, but nothing surprising and too many opportunities missed, I award it a Feta. Not terrible (See Event Horizon sometime for definition of Terrible), but wait for the video release.