ALL SCI-FI

[The Spike]

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, Derbyshire Style.

In Derby, England, five friends wake up after a night of partying, sex, and punch-ups to find all power is cut and a giant U.F.O. hovering above the city.

Watch while we turn on each other.

Wow, there has been some serious and venomous scorn poured down on this one — so much so I actually was expecting "the worst British sci-fi film of all time".

But as it happens, it's not especially great per se, yet neither is it worthy of such hatred. There's some great ambition by director and writer Dominic Burns, who wants to tell a tale of how the human condition crumbles under the duress of an alien invasion.

To that end the goal is reached. We understand and see that. The trouble is is that it all looks so cheap and acted accordingly to budget constraints. Burns tries hard to mask the El Budgeto Cheapo production with some nifty tricks of the trade; rotating camera, slow-mo and rapid edits, even plenty of film noir off-kilter framing shots to align the viewers with the disorientation felt by the protagonists. But we are constantly aware that it's made on the cheap, and the story has been done far better elsewhere, and often.

Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sean Pertwee are on the cast credits, but fans of those guys should know that their combined screen time doesn't stretch to over ten minutes, and both seem to be either doing it as a favour to the director or purely to pay the electric bill.

Elsewhere Van Damme's daughter, Bianca Bree, and Pierce Brosnan's son, Sean (a spitting image of young Pierce), hold their ends up well enough, while a couple of familiar faces from This Is England pop in to push the story along.

There's some decent stabs at humour within, including a brilliant riff on Aliens, and unlike many other reviewers and sci-fi film lovers, I thought the ending was terrific, a perfect closure. But it remains a film that's very hard to recommend to the serious sci-fi film buff.

Better than the internet ratings and what the pro critics suggest it is, but it's still only viable as a time waster that doesn't achieve the ambition on the page. 5/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Bud Brewster]

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Never heard of this one, but now that I'm warned a bit, I'll bet I could enjoy it.

And if this poster is any indication of just how many high-flying special effects this movie contains, I'm going get it from Netflix and give it a shot.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Good lord, I haven't seen this one, but the trailer has me chompin' at the proverbial bit.
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________________ Alien Uprising - trailer (2013)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]