Review of Extraterrestrial (2014) by Jeff B — 14 May 2015

I'm glad that the Vicious Brothers, not really brothers but more of an artistic name for the duo, talk about ostentatious, got back to basics with this film. Essentially, their last film, Grave Encounters 2, the sequel to a pretty damn good Grave Encounters, was their attempt to show how clever and smart they were.

It was so self-referential that it was the film equivalent of these two jerking off in front of everyone. They were essentially patting themselves on the back for making a good movie. That's what the sequel is essentially, the Vicious brothers were congratulating themselves for making a good movie.

They had their heads up their ass and I'm kinda glad that they calmed down, or someone calmed them down, whichever it is, and they made a relatively straightforward alien invasion movie. And it's a pretty stylish one at that.

It's obvious this film had a larger budget than both Grave Encounters, so they clearly played around with that a lot as the film, visually, at least, is really damn good. It's kind of ironic because one of the blurbs for the reviews on here that there should've been less self-indulgence.

Clearly this reviewer did not see Grave Encounters 2. Perhaps Extraterrestrial features some of their self-indulgent tendencies, but I, perhaps being an idiot, who knows, did not pick up on them. Then again, isn't someone wanting to make a film a self-indulgent experiment.

At least if you're a filmmaker that makes quality films. The only filmmakers that cannot claim they are doing this for their own indulgence are these directors that do these shitty, low-budget kids' films that no one watches.

These people have no delusions of grandeur. But I digress. I thought the film is interesting, at least on a visual level. There was a point where I thought this film was gonna be fun genre fare. And I don't wanna say that it doesn't offer some fun little moments, but there was just something here that kept it from that.

I honestly have no idea what it is or where it happened, but it wasn't as much fun as it was shaping up to be. Perhaps because I expected a little more humor out of it. There was some humor here, but it was minimal and prior to the aliens crashing on earth.

The characterization and plot development is as cliched and generic as they come. There's nothing the film can do, visually, to blind me to that fact. There's even the whole 'government conspiracy' ending going on here, as if you thought these guys would come up with a clever ending instead of something that's been used, literally, for years now.

The acting is fine, the highlight, obviously, being Michael Ironside. Small role, but he's still great in it. Everyone else is decent, I don't really have anything to complain about there. On top of the government conspiracy ending, we also get a bit of a tragic romance ending.

To say that it felt out of place with the entire thing taking place during an alien invasion is an understatement. It makes sense with the entire arc April faces, but it still feels completely out of place.

Another problem is also the fact that you never buy into these two being in love to the point where you're truly heartbroken about what happens. No matter if you use a sorrowful music score and use a slo-mo effect to make everything look more dramatic than it really is.

It's actually really lame, but it is what it is. It's the ending they wanted to go with. Though, to be fair, how exactly do you end this movie once you bring in the government into it? Not a particularly satisfying way to end the film.

There is some good gore though, not much, but what is there is good. This movie got worse as I reviewed it so I'm downgrading it to 2 stars. Some cool visual effects and genre thrills are simply not enough to overcome all of its flaws that I've just outlined.

It's certainly watchable, I didn't pull my hair out, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it. If the first Grave Encounters is on there then watch that, it's considerably better.