‘Alien Invasion’ Review
Stars: Sarah T. Cohen, Amber Doig-Thorne, May Kelly, Benjamin Colbourne, Nikolai Leon, Matthew Baunsgard, Richard Kovacs, Leah Glater, Bao Tieu | Written by Craig McLearie | Directed by Fred Searle
What’s that? Sarah T. Cohen, Amber Doig-Thorne AND May Kelly all starring together in another Scott Jeffrey production? Colour me intrigued… This trio are three of the best performers Jeffrey has “discovered” over the years and they’re all together in one film. OK, OK, so it’s a film written by Craig McLearie, who hasn’t exactly captured the magic of 2021’s Jagged Edge/Proportion Productions era with his scripts, but one can but hope right?
Let’s get this out of the way first, Alien Invasion is SUCH an on-the-nose title. Like seriously, you couldn’t have come up with something a little more subtle? But then when your production company has made films with titles like Snake Hotel and The Killing Tree which described EXACTLY what occurs in the film, then what do you expect? This particular invasion sees a group of friends celebrating the birthday of Lyra (Cohen) who find a large egg containing an alien predator… So Alien on earth then? And by that I mean Alien 2: On Earth, the 1980 unofficial Italian “sequel” to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, written and directed by Ciro Ippolito – which saw a girl on a beach discover a blue pulsating rock with a creature inside.
Er, by any chance has anyone involved with this production been watching 88 Film’s Blu-ray of Ciro Ippolito’s film recently? Because this film’s “egg” looks a lot like a pulsating blue(ish) rock to me! Maybe that’s why this film’s rubber-suited alien, Lacerta, looks like a weird knock-off of the Alien franchises Xenomorph too? That’s something Italian filmmakers did back in the day as well!
In terms of story, well there is none. Alien hatches, alien goes on the rampage, humans try not to die. And they STUPIDLY refuse to call the police! Why? Because one of the group is AWOL from the Army and the scientist who had the egg in the first place said “Don’t let them have it” as he died… OK then. Any excuse to not end the film early and have the cops/army come in and blow the alien to pieces. Instead, we get scene after scene of our group of friends running around the woods, slowly their numbers dwindling. Hell, they even try to get help from a priest, the father of Amber Doig-Thorne’s Norma, and they get him killed too!
Eventually we’re left with Lyra, Norma and the alien, Lacerta. Yes… you guessed it. There’s no INVASION. You can’t even call what Lacerta gets up to any kind of invasion, it’s just killing people on instinct… until of course Norma, the meek god-fearing member of the group decides she’s had enough, screams “Get away from her you bitch” (ripping off THAT line from Aliens). Although Norma never actually gets to do anything, because a bright light depends from the sky and… cut to Richard Kovacs’ Micha, the scientist who started all this, as he – on video recordings that have been interspersed with the latter half of the film, bluntly states “we are not alone in this universe, and there are probably more of them out there”. Implying a bloody invasion but one that we NEVER SEE, despite the film’s title!
Jeffrey and co. have made plenty of great films on a low budget but Alien Invasion is unimaginative and uninspired and it certainly wastes the talents of the three leads I was so excited to see working together and it wastes the audience’s time too. A low point for Jagged Edge/Proportion Productions methinks.