Sphere

A spacecraft is discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, presumed to be at least 300 years old and of alien origin. A crack team of scientists and experts is assembled and taken to the ocean floor to investigate. However, the ship is not as it seems and when a giant perfect sphere is discovered in the cargo bay, things begin to fall apart.

Critics largely dismissed Sphere as a derivative, tension-free disappointment that squanders its A-list cast and promising premise. Where reviewers diverged was on whether the film at least functions as a passable thriller — a position almost no one was willing to defend — versus something more fundamentally broken at the script level, with too much talk papering over a story that was never fully worked out.