It's early evening out in the desert. A hayseed is driving along in his pickup drinking a beer and listening to country-western. Within moments, in the course of a single song, it's the dead of night. Since all the characters in this movie are cookie-cutter, two- dimensional and stereotypical, and this particular cookie-cutter is the hayseed-truck-driving-beer-drinking-country-western-listening- cookie-cutter, he must do what cookie-cutter stereotypes do. In other words, he must go unload that beer whilst fully illuminated in the high beams of his own truck. And we get to watch. You can already tell this is going to be a winner.
Suddenly the electricals in his truck start to act up. For the rest of the picture we know that this means the space alien/monster is close by. In this movie, this is what passes for foreshadowing.
For no apparent reason, an orb-shaped whatsit crashes in the desert not far from a down-on-its-luck retreat for wayward boys and girls. Nosy hayseed pokes around the impact site too much sees an egg-like object in the open sphere and promptly has himself sucked dry of all of his innards by a space alien/monster. Takes less time than it's taken me to describe it.
The alien/monster is overtly biomechanical with a very heavy emphasis on the mechanical part. About the only part that seems to still be biological is the proboscis/sucker that pops out of his chest to suck out your insides.
Structurally, the alien/monster looks like a love child between a T1000, a centaur, and Johnny Bravo. Everything is so heavily biased towards the front with 4 little short legs that, physics being honored, it would spend all of its time keeled over on its face. But it can outrun a truck. Uh huh.
The only potential reason for its presence, tentatively and halfheartedly put forward by one of the kids whose primary purpose is to be menu items, is that it is here as part of an initial salting operation.
At one point in the movie there's a person glued to a cave wall with a baby monster stuck on its chest winding up for dinner. Thank you all the Alien movies.
To emphasize how tough the alien/monster is, it rather effortlessly survives a full-size helicopter ride smack into a vertical granite wall 200 feet up with subsequent explosion and freefall to the desert floor. And some more fire. And it just comes out with kind of a sunburn.
It finally gets taken out with a pipe bomb. Lucky for us it had that T1000 father. And apparently teenager reprobates make the best ordinance.
Really, this movie is formulaic from front to back. You could substitute any given teenage slasher character for the alien/monster and not miss a step. Unexplained, apparently indestructible antagonist kills (and optionally eats) teenage victims one by one until Hero Teenager, Love Interest and Plucky Nerd are all that's left. Then they do that One Magical Thing that stops the antagonist. The End.
What really kills this movie is the monster design and bottom-of- the-barrel story. The CGI is actually pretty good for a low-budget film. The acting is adequate and middle-of-the-road with two notable exceptions. The Only Looking out for Myself teenager character does some of the worst acting I've ever seen (but at least he doesn't See the Light just prior to dying). The Teenage Hero character, on the other hand, is actually quite good.
Good writing can almost save anything. Bad writing can kill anything for sure.
Suddenly the electricals in his truck start to act up. For the rest of the picture we know that this means the space alien/monster is close by. In this movie, this is what passes for foreshadowing.
For no apparent reason, an orb-shaped whatsit crashes in the desert not far from a down-on-its-luck retreat for wayward boys and girls. Nosy hayseed pokes around the impact site too much sees an egg-like object in the open sphere and promptly has himself sucked dry of all of his innards by a space alien/monster. Takes less time than it's taken me to describe it.
The alien/monster is overtly biomechanical with a very heavy emphasis on the mechanical part. About the only part that seems to still be biological is the proboscis/sucker that pops out of his chest to suck out your insides.
Structurally, the alien/monster looks like a love child between a T1000, a centaur, and Johnny Bravo. Everything is so heavily biased towards the front with 4 little short legs that, physics being honored, it would spend all of its time keeled over on its face. But it can outrun a truck. Uh huh.
The only potential reason for its presence, tentatively and halfheartedly put forward by one of the kids whose primary purpose is to be menu items, is that it is here as part of an initial salting operation.
At one point in the movie there's a person glued to a cave wall with a baby monster stuck on its chest winding up for dinner. Thank you all the Alien movies.
To emphasize how tough the alien/monster is, it rather effortlessly survives a full-size helicopter ride smack into a vertical granite wall 200 feet up with subsequent explosion and freefall to the desert floor. And some more fire. And it just comes out with kind of a sunburn.
It finally gets taken out with a pipe bomb. Lucky for us it had that T1000 father. And apparently teenager reprobates make the best ordinance.
Really, this movie is formulaic from front to back. You could substitute any given teenage slasher character for the alien/monster and not miss a step. Unexplained, apparently indestructible antagonist kills (and optionally eats) teenage victims one by one until Hero Teenager, Love Interest and Plucky Nerd are all that's left. Then they do that One Magical Thing that stops the antagonist. The End.
What really kills this movie is the monster design and bottom-of- the-barrel story. The CGI is actually pretty good for a low-budget film. The acting is adequate and middle-of-the-road with two notable exceptions. The Only Looking out for Myself teenager character does some of the worst acting I've ever seen (but at least he doesn't See the Light just prior to dying). The Teenage Hero character, on the other hand, is actually quite good.
Good writing can almost save anything. Bad writing can kill anything for sure.