They Do Not Come In Peace
Starring: Brittany Allen, Freddie Stroma, Melanie Papalia, Jesse Moss, Anja Savcic, Sean Rogerson
Director: Colin Minihan
2014 | 101 Minutes | Not Rated
“This is definitely not an airplane.” – Seth
I don’t really remember where I heard about Extraterrestrial. Whenever… wherever… whoever it was… thank you. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
A group of friends heads to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of fun. What they find is terror in the form of an alien visitor.
Extraterrestrial was directed by Colin Minihan, one half of The Vicious Brothers. The directors as Grave Encounters, a found footage movie that I have actually not yet seen. The fact that these guys did a previous found footage movie led me to believe that this would be a found footage movie. Not so. There are some found footage elements but it’s not a TRUE found footage flick. Most of the movie is shown from a typical point of view but some segments are shown from handheld and cell phone cameras.
Extraterrestrial is part Cabin in the Woods, part Signs and part slasher movie. Seems like a little bit of a weird combo but it works. It never feels like a low budget DTV release. The Vicious Brother has done a good job squeezing every penny out of what was likely a smaller budget than the typical Hollywood blockbusters.
The editing and cinematography is slick and stylish. The music is catchy. And there are actually some decent scares.
The usual shortcoming for DTV movies is the special effects. Extraterrestrial has avoided that pitfall and created some cool looking creatures, alien sets and UFOs.
At the end of the movie I actually found myself quite shocked at how good Extraterrestrial really was. It’s not super original and really isn’t very memorable (I barely remembered what had happened within a few hours) but I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a couple hours.
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