Susan Granger’s review of “Extraterrestrial” (IFC Midnight)
In case you were wondering, this indie horror flick has absolutely nothing in common with Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” Instead, it’s yet another lame supernatural saga, revolving around terrified teenagers who are staying at a cabin in the woods.
Written and directed by Colin Minihan and Stu Ortiz – a.k.a. the Vicious Brothers – it follows April (Brittany Allen) who plans to spend a romantic weekend with her boyfriend Kyle (Freddie Stroma) at her family’s cabin, a haven from her childhood which is going to be sold as part of her parents’ divorce. To her chagrin, Kyle invites three of his most obnoxious friends (Jesse Moss, Melanie Papalia, Anja Savcic) to join them. After partying with beer and marijuana, they discover that a UFO has crashed nearby and they’re being watched by one of the craft’s survivors. When they attack and kill the alien, they incite immediate retribution by its crew mates. Predictably, a tree falls across the road, blocking their only way into town, and there are encounters with the Sheriff (Gil Bellows) and Travis (Michael Ironside), a cantankerous, gun-toting Vietnam veteran who is determined to protect his property.
Brittany Allen, who won a Daytime Emmy for “All My Children,” has little to work with, so she and the rest of the cast flounder in the trite assemblage of dumbed-down flotsam and campy jetsam from “The X-Files,” “War of the Worlds,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Alien,” “Cloverfield,” “Dark Skies,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Blair Witch Project,” even “Minority Report.”
To their credit, the Vicious Brothers (“Grave Encounters”) display some impressive tracking shots and the CGI is better than one might expect, given the low budget. But the repeated use of found-footage and the cynical, self-indulgent epilogue are inexcusable.
But on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Extraterrestrial” is an all-too-familiar 4, filled with clichéd predictability.
