The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMovie reviews

Extraterrestrial

Extraterrestrial | Movie review
27 October 2014
Matthew McKernan
Avatar
Matthew McKernan
27 October 2014

Movie and show review

Matthew McKernan

Extraterrestrial

★★★★★

Release date

29th October 2014

Certificate

UPG121518 title=

Links

FacebookWebsite

Extraterrestrial is a horror film with a mission: filmmakers The Vicious Brothers (actually named Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz) have a checklist of alien invasion and slasher film clichés and they want to tick off every single one.

The characters are not developed beyond the Final Girl (Brittan Allen), the Bland Semi-Capable Boyfriend (Freddie Stroma), the Dumb Blonde (Anja Savcic), the Promiscuous One (Melanie Papalia) and the Obnoxious Sex-Crazed One (Jesse Moss). They visit a cabin in the woods, have no signal on their phones and when a tree collapses across the only road into town, there is no way out. And when the aliens crash land nearby, the film runs through the same numbingly familiar slasher film routine. A ridiculous extended cameo from Michael Ironside stinks of desperation rather than inspiration.

The one surprise that this film has to offer is that, for a low-budget horror quickie, it looks rather good. The lighting and camerawork are decent and the CGI is used sparingly, though the filmmakers repeatedly lurch into found-footage during the big special effects scenes for reasons presumably financial.

The actors try to do more than the poor and uninterested script will allow, but it is a lost cause. The dialogue makes you hate the Obnoxious One after only one line and leaves it at that, but worst off is Anja Savcic, who is given fewer lines than an alien hand has fingers, before being relegated entirely to the background. The sole bit of drama in the film is a rushed scene in which the Final Girl illogically tries to get out of a marriage proposal by claiming that we are alone in the universe. The aliens quickly show up to belie that notion and any pretence at making the characters seem like actual people ends there. The Vicious Brothers are more interested in being, well, vicious but then the film is restrained by a box office-friendly 15 certificate. The only scene that could be considered vicious is one with an anal probe, which tries to make that peculiar alien obsession appear frightening rather than just wholly stupid.

The film ends with an extended tracking shot that is nasty, cynical and pranky – an amusing close scored to Elton John’s version of Spirit in the Sky that cries out for a better film to precede it. The rest of the film is insistently unoriginal, tonally erratic and just not much fun.

★★★★★

Matthew McKernan

Extraterrestrial is released nationwide on 29th October 2014.

Watch the trailer for Extraterrestrial here:

Related Itemsalienscabin in the woodsclichefilmhorrorscience fictionvicious brothers

More in Movie reviews

The Road Dance

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Rhino

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

The Innocents

★★★★★
Emma Kiely
Read More

Benediction

★★★★★
Lauren Devine
Read More

This Much I Know to Be True

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

Vortex

★★★★★
Joseph Owen
Read More

Everything Everywhere All at Once

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

Father Stu

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Matthew McKernan

Extraterrestrial

★★★★★

Release date

29th October 2014

Certificate

UPG121518 title=

Links

FacebookWebsite

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • The Road Dance
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Enys Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Stranger
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic at the British Museum
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Eo (Hi-Han)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Nas: Time Is Illmatic | Movie review
Grand Guignol at Southwark Playhouse | Theatre review