Extraterrestrial

Dir: Colin Minihan

2014

***

Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz, otherwise known as The Vicious Brothers, have produced a cliched and rather unoriginal alien movie with their 2014 horror Extraterrestrial. However, it delivers everything you could possibly want from the sub-genre, making it something of a guilty pleasure. I believe the special effects and design of both the alien and their aircraft are intentionally cheesy at times, harking back to old 1950's b-movies as well as more modern Extraterrestrial sci-fi epics. The set up is poor, the characters are tiresome, the location predictable and the fact that the only other person to believe the kids about the alien is a weed-growing conspiracy theorist would have stopped me from watching, had I known about it before sitting down to watch, but overall the film really isn't that bad. The alien's are clearly intelligent because of their technology, and yet on the inside of their spaceships it is a sticky mess, they've visited earth countless times and have abducted thousands of people, and yet they are still probing peoples bottoms in the hope of finding something new. None of it makes sense but really, none of it matters. It's a haunted house film with aliens, people get killed off one by one and something or rather will make you jump at least once along the way. There is nothing intelligent about it whatsoever, it's just 106 minutes of unadulterated dumb fun. I'm not usually an advocate of dumb fun but after watching many films like this that take themselves far too seriously, it's nice to see one that doesn't and is at least so stupid you can't possibly take it seriously. Plus the special effects are pretty good all things considered. The ending is great, a laughable mess but all the better for it in my opinion. It's also got Michael Ironside in it, which automatically makes it just that little bit better than all films that don't star him - although sadly he doesn't lose any body parts, which is a bit of a faux pas from The Vicious Brothers really, given they are self-confessed horror fans and horror film makers. I think the fact that Michael Ironside doesn't lose a limb tells you everything you need to know about Extraterrestrial really, you're happy with the basics, you just can't help but think they missed a trick or five. It's not great, really not great at all but I could watch this sort of nonsense all day long.