Review of Altered (2006) by Victor D — 14 Jan 2007

[b][color=#000000][font=Times New Roman][size=4]I went up and down with my feelings about this film while I was watching it. Now that I have thought about for a while I have decided I liked it. It has its rough spots to be sure, but ultimately (especially since this was an independent release with a smaller budget) this was a good movie. The effects are very good. The scene where they play intestinal tug-of-war with the alien is just crazy! It?s a brutal yet effectively creepy scene. The music score is not really present that much through the film, but where it is there it works effectively.[/size][/font][/color][/b].

[b][color=#000000][font=Times New Roman][size=4]Ok, for the rough spots. Most of them come from the basic plot. One of the reasons that Wyatt keeps alluding to for why they can?t just kill the alien they have captured is that the rest of the aliens in retribution will destroy the human race. He says it would be a massacre. Yet when they face the aliens that come for their captured pal, not one of them appears to have any weapons and are kept out of the house by wood nailed over the windows. Wyatt blows his house up, killing a few aliens and the ship runs off. They hardly act as powerful and as capable of slaughtering the whole planet as they are made out to be.[/size][/font][/color][/b].

[b][color=#000000][font=Times New Roman][size=4]I also don?t know why they let Cody suffer like they did. Granted the guy was an A-hole, no argument from me there, but they obviously cared for the guy as a friend. As soon as he is infected Wyatt says that there is no cure and the infection is slow and extremely painful. So?do they put the guy out of his misery? Naw, they let him suffer through the rest of the film. Ok, really though I like this film because the characters are realistic and the atmosphere it creates is really nerve-wracking. The director, Eduardo Sanchez, is one of the co-directors of [i]The Blair Witch Project[/i] and this is another independent film release that he has done that captures some very realistically frightening stuff.[/size][/font][/color][/b].