So, I have to admit that I did not know how long I would be down with my recent computer troubles, so I enlisted some help to get through some of the movie reviews… so I brought in a guest reviewer, and he was not happy. I hope he helps me out in the future, but who knows… HA!
On to the review:
ALIEN ORIGIN from the B-Boys at The Asylum.
Spoiler Alert: this so-called found footage documentary sucks.
First off, let me give props to the editors for attempting to make something out of the cheap footage they had to work with. On with the review.
As an ancient alien enthusiast I probably had more reason than most to watch this flick, and ultimately all the more personal reason to hate it in the end. (By the way, I only made it to the end in order to give it the full review).
As I suspected after the trailer-like intro to the piece, there was going to be no explanation regarding the origin of anything except how the footage came to be recorded by a female documentarian, who for some reason at one point does an impersonation of a reporter for the camera, and her two cameramen while they accompany a small group of soldiers into the jungles of Belize. I won’t even start on how ridiculous these so-called soldiers are – it’s a movie so let’s just roll with it.
Wait, we can’t.
The problem here is that found footage films rely on one basic principle to sell their story: they’re supposedly real. But too quickly does this excuse to cash in on the caught-on-tape craze fall down. The first of the Blair Witch scene-steals has the cameras capturing a “visit” during the night by “something” and we see snippets of the footage, but when the crew wakes up in the morning the cameras that captured that footage have been taken by the “visitor”. The obvious question here is, you guessed it, how are we seeing footage from cameras that were taken away from the crew?
And it continues to go down river from there.
A nice money-saving, but audience-losing, device employed by the producers here was fucking up every single frame with anything alien – or action – in it to the point where it was nothing but dropped frames, glitches, sound effects and noise. Scary? Of course not. Interesting? Not at all. Annoying beyond tolerable levels? Very much so. All the footage of the cast walking and talking is in good shape though, so that’s something.
There is one outstanding thing about this flick: if you’re looking for something on Netflix to fall asleep to this one will put you out fast. Even for a found footage film, this flick is boring. That is all. The end. Cut to black.
—–
Wait!!! Review tack on (just like the film tacks on the last thirty second scene): They finally explain the “origin” of the supposed aliens!!! A producer of the flick must have noticed that nothing had been explained before the end because it’s explained with a b-roll shot of two cast members whose faces we can’t see and two new voices badly recorded in someone’s kitchen dubbed in over top. And the explanation for everything? Well I don’t want to ruin the movie for you.
—–
I guess that says it all, in good conscience, I can’t get behind this one:
If you really ‘got to have it’ though, don’t say I didn’t warn you…you can get it HERE:
One Response to “Review: Alien Origin (The Asylum)”
Leave a Reply
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Thank you for reviewing Alien Origin. I have been looking for a movie like this all day. I have a weekly contest with a couple of my coworkers from DISH to see who can find the worst (best?) B movie. Found footage films have won 3 out of the past 4 weeks, so I think I have a pretty good shot with Alien Origins. I just added it to the top of my Blockbuster @Home rental queue, so I should have it mid week. The other guys have Blockbuster too, but with so many movies I doubt anyone else rented this one.