This film is a mess

I am a fan of the movie. I just saw the director's cut, which I think improves the movie some. There are two problems with the movie.

First off, they needed a better actress for Lori. There wasn't really good chemistry between her and Boone. The movie is a love story, but I didn't care about her.

Second and most importantly is that this was a movie that was made to be a franchise. It's a set up for a second movie. So you have Decker as the villain, but he's not really the villain. He's set up as the bad guy, but fizzled out in the end. The thing about the theatrical version is that they did set Decker up for the next movie. In the director's cut Ashberry turns out to become the villain, but he's so underused in the movie, that he just becomes setup for the next movie. So both ways don't work as well. Decker wasn't originally set up to be the main villain, so he gets wasted in the end. Ashberry was meant to become the villain, but isn't used enough. So it hurts the movie.

Yes, the movie was a mess but....it was a glorious mess. I wish Hollywood would take more risks with visions like this instead of the corporate, plain vanilla we have now.