Invasion Planet Earth
Simon Cox (Driven) writes and directs this sci-fi labour of love. Two decades in the making, on a shoestring budget, Invasion Planet Earth invites us into a world ambitiously envisioned, but disappointingly realised.
Things aren’t going well for our hero Tom Dunn (Simon Haycock). He’s struggling to cope with the devastating loss of his baby daughter. After a few years of despair, Mandy (Lucy Drive) – his doting wife – has some good news: she’s pregnant. Tom can’t stay happy for long, though. A harrowing day at his work in a care centre is preceded by a startling vision, shared by three of his patients, and followed by an alien invasion. It places the child he just found out he was going to have at mortal risk, as well as the wider human race.
Tom is abducted by the aliens along with his three patients, who all suffer from mental health issues. The four must work together to help planet Earth, as well as themselves, as they make a journey on the aliens’ spacecraft, while simultaneously working through their varying problems. It’s a plot that initially piques the interest, but its conceit labours and wears thin.
Cox had the idea to make the film way back in 1999, finishing a first draft of the script in 2003. In the intervening years between that draft and the end of production, sci-fi has experienced something of a renaissance, sabotaging the novelty of Cox’s 1999 concept. It doesn’t help that the CGI is ostensibly managed by someone sent forward in time from the 90s, making for some inexplicably messy action scenes.
Invasion Planet Earth is a film that’ll most likely best be remembered in posterity for the near-two-decade-long toil to make it, rather than product at the end of that epic struggle.
Jake Cudsi
Invasion Planet Earth is released in select cinemas on 5th December 2019.
Watch the trailer for Invasion Planet Earth here:
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