Your enjoyment of Prometheus ultimately hinges on what you are looking to get out of the film. If, like the crew of the titular spaceship, you are looking for definitive answers or a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the outing, you are going to walk away disappointed. But if you can simply be content to watch a beautifully-shot, well-acted suspense film with a story full of plotholes and underwhelming revelations, you’ll feel like you got your money’s worth.

Ultimately, I think I fell somewhere in between disappointed and satisfied. There are parts of the film I loved and parts that left me shaking my head.

Ridley Scott is a great director and he is able to sustain that wonderful foreboding feeling and sense of mystery established in the trailers. The main characters in this film are archeologists searching for mankind’s root deep in outer space, but the film establishes a sense early that they will not like what they find. Also, while Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) are there simply looking for answers to life’s greatest mysteries (Where did we come from and why are we here?), there are others on the ship with ulterior motives. Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), who represents the company bankrolling the operation, is looking for ways to monetize this newly-discovered planet. And David (Michael Fassbender) is a human-like android with a much darker and more mysterious hidden agenda.

The film is a slow burn. Scott is able to ratchet up the tension as the team explores the gloomy, desolate rock planet, which features a labyrinth of underground tunnels. As the film goes on, you don’t know what the team will discover, but you know it won’t be good. The sets are all lavishly created and full of little nuances that help to build and sustain that tension.