directed by:
Adam Werth written by: Adam Werth genre: Sci-Fi |
Having seen a handful of films born out of the Mahal Empire, I’m fairly aware of what I’m in for. There’s a solid reputation for putting lots of emphasis on the action and precious little on the characters. I’d be the first to admit that’s always a tough sell with me, and as “Alien Storm” got underway with an army unit getting stuck in the fog, immersing the cast with their guns in a virtually all-white background before it dipped into the title credits highlighting its otherworldly theme, I could already feel myself getting a bit restless. As it turns out, that fog is headed towards Vegas, where some business dude is trying to throw a lavish party, which is likely to halt the fun. Oh no, said the average guy typing this out, whatever will we all do if the rich aren’t going to get to throw their money away on a pointless party?
After meeting what seemed like my twenty-fifth character onscreen within the first ten minutes or so, I hate to say it, but it seems like things are already falling into old habits & steamrolling along without worrying too much about oversaturating their content with extraneous details we don’t need. It is tough to accept “Alien Storm” as a groundbreaking kind of story – we’ve seen movies where people have battled fog…we’ve seen films with people battling aliens…we’ve…*gulp…never seen a movie that would dare to cast Kevin Sorbo as the US president, but alas, here we are and that’s the case. Another five minutes in, the cast has nearly doubled already – there are bodies onscreen everywhere, and it’s practically impossible to know where your attention is supposed to be going or what it should be fixed on. It’s a problematic approach to filmmaking…I’m not quite sure what else I can say about it. Yes, it’s a large party, and yes, it’s an army platoon, a government situation room…I understand, these are places where there would be a whole lot of people – all I’m saying is that it makes it extremely tough for the average everyday viewer to follow along, and with little character development even possible in such a large cast…I mean, c’mon…we’re looking at a whole bunch of red shirts essentially, aren’t we? I promise you, I keep an open mind with everything I watch, but at the same time, I’ve seen so many movies throughout my lifetime already that I know we’re about to be in for another situation where too much is going to be attempted with too little. You can mark my words at twenty minutes or so into watching “Alien Storm” – eventually this all leads to a bunch of bodies going splat from being shot, and the cast of like, seven-hundred people will get quickly whittled down to five or less when the bullets start flying. It’s the plight of the Action film, y’all. Story isn’t the priority. Characters aren’t the priority. The chaos is. The bullets are. The bloodshed is. And of course, we can’t forget to rah-rah America too. I’m not saying it’s all bad. I’m just saying that it’s a tough approach to make a memorable film. I don’t really know the economics behind the scenes and such – I don’t know what the goals are – maybe just aiming for being good is good enough, I really can’t say. I liked the scene where all the power went out - that was cool to look at & fun to consider what it would be like to see the grid of an entire city go dark. Seems scary to me. Add in a grumbling garbage can that’s moving around, and of course, that heightens the potential for mayhem. I also really liked how the fog is used and found myself kind of wishing that it weirdly got more screen time…it’s effective, even though it masks basically everything else you might be able to see. It’s a sensory style of effect when you really think about it. Not being able to see anything is frightening to just about everyone in their own way, so whenever the fog was used in “Alien Storm,” things worked out pretty well in those moments. As far as the aliens are concerned, some of that is alright…the Mahals & Werth dole them into the movie at a fairly slow pace, and they keep them mostly obscured so they can’t be scrutinized too much, which is smart. What we do see looks cool enough though – I felt like there were a lot of positives in the design of the creatures. Do they need to have glowing eyes? Does that make them scarier? That’d be a yes to the first question and a no to the second – they need their red glowing eyes so that we know they’re hidden somewhere in the fog, but as to whether or not that makes them more frightening, I didn’t feel like that was the case. For the most part, “Alien Storm” actually felt more effective with its implied horror than what it tends to show us. Like, screaming and being pulled into the fog by something we can’t see is likely a whole lot scarier to us as viewers than the red glowing eyes of a space alien would ever be, at least from my perspective.
So…what would you do? Would you stay at the party and try to hide somewhere so that you don’t get munched on by an alien, or would you choose to head outside & take your chances? It’s an interesting debate that the characters go through, and I enjoyed that for the brief moment it takes place. Shortly after they make a decision on that, you’ll see the extraterrestrial munching really begin, and at least you’ll have an idea of what you should or shouldn’t do if you ever find yourself in a similar situation one day. I gotta call things as I see them though – there’s just not enough suspense being generated here, which again, is largely because there’s not a single character onscreen that we have the opportunity to genuinely care about or sympathize with. It’s just a ton of random characters with a line or two, thrown together into a big ol’ pot of potential human stew, trying to survive together en masse. We might find our way to caring about the survival of our species as a whole, I suppose, but that still doesn’t hit us the same way on an emotional level. When the cast is this large, it’s extremely tough for any one character to stand out, or for us watchers to form the attachment we need in order to be able to care about them. Acting-wise, we’ve even got characters that are dead still blinking their eyes and breathing – objectively speaking, how are we supposed to reconcile that as we watch? Some things just aren’t going to be acceptable to viewers. Some things just can’t be overlooked. Even the potential heroes that run charging towards the aliens and such… we have no real idea why they’d be acting in such a selfless manner, because we just don’t know who these characters are. I gotta be honest with ya – “Alien Storm” for me was mildly entertaining at best. It seems to ignore any of the potential avenues it could have taken to become more engaging, opting to merely settle for being a Sci-Fi splatter fest instead. For some, like the most dedicated fans of Action and Sci-Fi among us, that’s still going to be enough – but the question I’d pose to the Mahal Empire at large would be: is being enough for a narrow slice of the potential audience out there really what you’re aiming for? Personally speaking, I need more – in every possible aspect and category you can think of. “Alien Storm” missed the mark by quite some margin, and I can’t think of any way I’d be able to give it more than two and a half stars outta five, which I feel is opting on the very generous side. A few solid moments? Sure. But after a hundred and ten minutes, I found myself wishing that the aliens might come along to take me instead. |
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