Review of Alien Abduction (2014) by Jesse O — 29 Sep 2016

Another found footage horror movie. Though this one embraces some more sci-fi themes what with it, OBVIOUSLY, focusing on aliens. I've already said my piece on found footage. Much like every genre, if the effort is put into creating a quality product, then you'll see that play out in the final edit.

And even if it's not a quality film, but you can see that they're making an effort to do something, then you also get to witness that in the end product. I'm kinda tired of saying this already, but I'm tired of people unnecessarily maligning the style for no real reason other than to be contrarians or condescending to the horror genre as a whole.

There's a specific blurb on here that's so condescending that it's embarrassing that this person couldn't even pretend to hide their distaste for the genre. Though, I will admit, that this movie isn't the best example of what found footage can offer.

Even if this was a straight-up horror movie without the found footage style, this wouldn't have been good. It's not a worse movie because of the style it employs, it's a bad movie regardless of it.

It's not even that this is such a terrible movie that I want to pull my hair out. It's just a bad movie. It's a movie that doesn't ever attempt to put its own mark in the genre. It exists simply for the sake of existing.

It exists because hardcore horror fans, like myself, would give it a shot simply because they love watching horror movies. I'd hate to say that this movie is lazy, because I'm sure that there was a lot of effort put into this behind the scenes, but it does end up feeling like it was lazily constructed.

The acting isn't great, but it could have been so much worse given the fact that this was a super low-budget flick. Because of that budget, you never actually get to see any of the aliens. Just quick little glimpses before the camera glitches out or they run away, shaking the camera, you know all the tricks.

And even on those quick glimpses you can tell that the alien itself looks absolutely dreadful. So they were at least smart enough to stay away from that. At they knew to hide their weaknesses. I wish I COULD say, however, that they also knew how to magnify their strengths, but I can't say that.

I can't honestly think of anything that the film did well. I can't come up with any positives. Which is a really strange thing for me, because I can at least come up with something. No matter how small.

And yet I can't do that for this film. So I guess it's worse than I thought. While I didn't hate this film or watching it as much as the review might imply, I can't say nothing good about this movie.

It just plays into every cliche of the genre that people have come to hate. You can do much worse than this for sure, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation either. Put plain and simply, this is a bad movie.