 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Extraterrestrial • Year: 2014 • Country: Canada/USA • Director: Colin Minihan • Main cast: Brittany Allen, Freddie Stroma, Jesse Moss • Runtime: 101 minutes • Production company: Abduction Films, Manis Film, Vicarious Entertainment TRAILER |
For us horror fans, the fears we enjoy the most are the fears we had as kids. In my case, one of my biggest fears as a child was having unwanted visits from space aliens. How many nights I spent totally covered in sheets and blankets only because I thought I saw some long tall shadow, and my over excited mind did the rest of the job. There are a few movies that gave me the creeps in a subject like this, like M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002) or that mockumentary starred by Milla Jovovich called The Fourth Kind (2009). But they never satisfied me 100%, I always had something missing for them to be “my perfect abduction film”.
Then I heard about Extraterrestrial. Constant references to the X-Files, scary dark alien film with their grey men and their colorful ships… Right after seeing the cover and reading the description I thought this movie could be one of those movies to instantly climb to the top of my favorite lists. But I was wrong.
The film is from the same people that brought us Grave Encounters 1 and 2 (2011/2012), which is not the most memorable one but it was a good tribute to 80’s alien monster movies. It is obvious that these guys love horror sci-fi movies and they enjoy doing what they do, only this time the trick didn’t do it.
The movie starts quite good. Direct, dark and with a shocking first scene that makes you think you are finally seeing something special. But soon it turns into a stupid kids-in-a-cabin movie. And here is the plot: A grup of boys and girls in their early 20s go to a cabin in the woods to sort out some family issues. They bring in scene the classic sex, drugs, alcohol and dramas cocktail that most of these kind of movies always have. But then, instead of being slashed by a psycho redneck or by demonic forces, the threat comes from aliens from outer space. I won’t go into details so I don’t spoil anything, there are some good scenes and scary moments with good thrilling tension, but the overall is lame, pretty lame.
One of the highlights of the movie is the appearance of the character played by Michael Ironside. He is one of the only things that imprint some personality to the movie, he’s been seen in so many other films like this, too bad he turns into some kind of bad parody. The biggest problem this movie has is the script. Stupid conversations, weird situations and characters acting like bi-polar dummies. Very bad script for a simple idea that could had turned into something interesting. But it totally loses interest as the movie runs to end up turned into a bad joke.
The movie ends up being like a mix of genres and you don’t even know what you’re watching. I guess they wanted it to end epic, but instead they released a bad pointless mix of cliches.
I have to admit I had high hopes in Extraterrestrial, and that can make it disappointing to watch. But, believe me, the movie is just not good.
RATE: 3/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2960930
