Search - Alien Abduction on DVD

Fantastically surreal, B-movie horror

Darrell E. Manrique | Brooklyn, New York, USA | 08/03/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Sci-Fi Channel showed this movie over the weekend, and I'm seriously thinking of buying the DVD. Often their weekend fare seems to be low-budget techno-testosterone-adventure that's best avoided by anyone with a brain. But "Alien Abduction" is low-budget something else entirely.

It starts out seeming innocuously unoriginal, with four fairly annoying twentysomethings on a camping trip in the woods. They experience a horrifically gory alien abduction (hence the title), and then our lead woman wakes up in an institution for abduction survivors, where she has to figure out what's going on before what's going on kills her. We're not told whether the other three have survived, but they do reappear in the story after a while. (I'm being vague here on purpose.)

I knew from the outset that there would be a twist ending, and I assumed the twist would be fairly standard and predictable. Once the movie got going, though, it became obvious that I'd have to revise my prediction. I actually made several guesses through the course of the movie about what it would be, but was still surprised when it finally came. And it was pretty clever to boot.

All the hospital scenes are shot in a wash of green, or sometimes purple, contributing to the surreal, dreamlike atmosphere that pervades the whole movie. The only full color is when reality starts to intrude. If you pay attention, there are clues and red herrings scattered throughout as to the true nature of the situation, and some of them are actually not obvious, such as when the woman in charge says she is "responsible for all the abductions in the northeast region." In context, she clearly means that her hospital is responsible for the victims of such abductions. -- Or does she? The bizarre behavior of many (if not most) characters is another clue, but for this there are at least three potential explanations within the course of the story. Don't make the usual mistake of thinking this is merely bad acting. While it may be that, it also (perhaps unintentionally) has the effect of adding to the surreal, inhuman, disorienting quality of our heroine's surroundings, while at the same time preserving the quiet campiness, which turns out to complement the story surprisingly well.

Along her adventure, our heroine discovers scarred, murderous nurses; how easy it is to pose as a doctor in a military-run hospital; and the importance of wearing the right clothes for any given occasion. This is good dirty camp, and should be appreciated as such. Yet this character also acts in a completely consistent and believeable way, and turns out (after an initial spate of shrieking) to be a pretty sympathetic protagonist. This movie was made on a shoestring budget over a whopping one-and-a-half weeks, and the sound quality in particular suffered for it -- be prepared to turn your volume up, then down, then up again, several times. (This is frustrating but not fatal.) For the money and time they had, they did a pretty good job with a pretty good script.

All in all, the best B-movie I've ever seen."

Alien Impostor

Ghoulie Guru | 07/08/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This movie got a shudder out of me before it even started. I saw the
logo for The Asylum come up and I knew immediately that I was in for 90
minutes of cheap, irritating horror film-making. I've come to associate
that logo with some of the worst genre movies ever. Worse than Roger
Corman's Concorde label, worse than Avi Lerner's NuImage, worse than
Charlie Band's Full Moon... yes, even worst than Lloyd Kaufman's Troma
label. The Asylum is, hands down, the worst cheap movie horror outfit
in the history of cinema in my opinion. So, as I said, the logo came up
and I shuddered involuntarily. But that was the only scare of the whole
movie.

The Asylum is true to form with ALIEN ABDUCTION. The early scenes of a
crew of campers out in the woods are poorly lit, poorly acted and
poorly edited. About ten minutes in, our hiking quartet is attacked by
a bunch of lizard-alien-monster things. It looks like the suit came
from a B-movie clearance house. It might have been a leftover Godzilla
suit for all I know. The filmmakers apparently knew that the suit was
ridiculous because they coated it with bad CG prismatic colors. Haven't
seen that done since "Darkhunters".

So after the alligator aliens capture our hikers by throwing stuffed
pantyhose at them (I'm not kidding - watch the movie), the screen goes
black for a second and then we meet our four hikers again inside the
alien spaceship. Our female protagonist keeps filming everything with
her Handicam to give the movie that "real" quality. Because so often,
when I'm abducted by alligator aliens, I feel the need to capture the
whole experience for posterity. They try to escape, the alligator
aliens catch them and eviscerate them, throwing intestines all over the
place with bloody glee.

Cut to some sort of Government Secret Hospital. Our heroine is the only
one to have survived the experience and she has no memory of what
happened to her. Her doctor tries to jog her memory with pictures of
aliens and flying saucers, but to no avail. Meantime, Ilsa the She-Wolf
watches from behind the mirror and makes all kinds of arch statements
like, "I don't like her. Terminate her." The doctor begs for just a
little more time. Our heroine manages to escape from her captors and
her clothes several times over the course of the movie. After an hour,
I had seen the heroine's breasts so often that I was starting to
memorize her freckles.

So our heroine runs around, taking off her shirt, trying to avoid
aliens and help her friends (who are in fact alive!) escape from the
institution. But when she finally faces off with Ilsa, guess what....
she's not really a human at all! In a startling reveal that you will
not see coming if you sleep through the first hour, we find out that
our heroine is actually an alien sleeper agent! At this point, the
movie tries to become a poor man's version of Impostor - but if Phillip
K. Dick heard me say that, he'd probably roll in his grave. Obviously
somebody at the Asylum watched the Gary Sinise/Dimension version of
Impostor and thought, "Let's do that, but with alligator men! We'll
call it Alien Impostor! No, wait, that will give away the twist.... how
about ALIEN ABDUCTION!""

Great Weird Horror Movie

Deacon S | WISCONSIN | 05/04/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I like really disturbing films and this is definitely one of them. The lead actress is great and she really carries the movie. Every time I thought this was one thing it became another thing and it made me really edgy. There was a lot of blood and some okay Aliens that you hardly even saw but most of this is like your not sure what's going to happen and everything is really horrible. It got talky at one part but I watched it through and the end is really great. If you like this type of film you'll really like this one."

Screaming Star Trek

Mrs. Weasely | Chicago | 05/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This was low budget like the 3rd year of Star Trek. However like Star Trek the money went a long way. It is Sci-Fi with a twist at the end. It is a Sci-Fi Horror movie and unlike Star Trek, it will get you to scream"