Well folks, the well of DVR recorded movies ran dry – it was time to check out Netflix, specifically horror. I loves me some good horror, “good” being the operative word here. We shall see. As the title suggests, this was an alien movie. And being a Netflix special, starred a bunch of B actors, although there was one great one – J. K. Simmons as Edwin, the alien “expert”. The four main characters were a family: Keri Russell as Lacy, the mom, Josh Hamilton as Daniel, Lacy’s husband, Dakota Goyo as older son Jesse, and Kadan Rockett as Sammy, the youngest.
Daniel was an out of work architect, and when he got shot down on an interview, he beat the roof of his car with his briefcase. Really? Sadly, Kadan Rockett as Sammy was one of the worst kid actors I have ever seen.
Okay so we needed a scene to show how strange things were happening with the house. Hey how about birds flying into the windows? That’s a tried and true cliché. To make the scene worse, it was obvious someone was just throwing fake birds at the windows – they weren’t even flying – turrible!
As I watched this movie, John “Daniel” Hamilton reminded me of a younger, thinner, less simian-faced Will Ferrell. Anywho, this was one of those “pull a sci fi/paranormal/horror cliché out of a hat” movies – basically one cliché scene after another. People stood in trances like Paranormal Activity. Kitchen objects were found mysteriously arranged like Poltergeist. Then the hackneyed melon-headed grey aliens. And speaking of greys, why do they always look the same? Huge heads, with impossibly thin necks, arms and legs – in earth’s gravity, these beings would crumble like stale pound cake! And why naked? Are we to believe that primitive beings go naked, but as they become more advanced, they wear clothes, then when they evolve to super advanced, they go back to naked again? Or is it simply that greys would look silly in aluminized space suits?
Anwho, with all this tomfoolery going on, the morons in this movie can’t figure it out? Come on, man! Finally, we got to see a real actor – Simmons as Edwin. Sadly, even he couldn’t save this pile of cliché crap. His speech was so long-winded I actually nodded off a few times. Where was the editor? And then the ice cream story – lame. Who wrote this schlock?
To no surprise, Jesse got abducted by the aliens. I felt sorry for Jesse, he was the only character I really liked. Only thirteen years old, he just had his first kiss. And now his next sexual experience will be getting probed in the arse by greys. Cue Andrew Dice Clay to yell, “Oooooh!”
We finally got to the bitter end, and as if to rub it in, they sequenced all these flash backs to tell the rest of the obvious story. As if mocking us for stupidly watching this movie in the first place. Well, another Netflix flop. Two belly flops out of twelve.