You all know, I love a good bad movie. I mean, seriously, I buy those Elvira Double Feature DVDs that have two awesomely bad films all in one box and I LOVE it. That being said, ALIEN UPRISING is one of the absolute worst films I’ve ever seen for SO many reasons. Story, acting, production value … but above all else, it’s not even horrible in a fun way. it’s horrible in an “I almost forgot I was watching a movie and started to leave before it occurred to me there was a reason I was watching TV” kind of way.

   From their Web site:

   In the future. Marines land on the prison planet Rove 12 in order to put down a suspected prisoner uprising. When the Marines arrive, they find most of the prisoners and all of the guards dead. Any survivors are hiding from a ruthless, blood thirsty creature. Now the prisoners and the Marines have to band together to get off the planet - ALIVE.

   And that pretty much sums up the plot. Despite the rip-offian quality of the premise, however, I still held out hope. There’s a lot that can be done in a story like this—good characters or acting can add a spark, a well-done creature or some bloody kills can up the scare factor or gore appeal—heck, even a fancy-looking set could give a flick a boost.

   Unfortunately, we get none of that. The performances are so flat that at one point, I thought back to high school and actually started casting the film in my head with people from drama class that I thought would have done better jobs. Not to say they would have had much to work with; there’s not one memorable character in the bunch, and it all becomes a vicious cycle of non-descript non-characters spouting out ridiculous and/or boring dialogue. Moving past all that, there could’ve been a spectacular monster that was sending everyone into a tizzy, something with bloody teeth or slimy, pus-dripping scales—but again, no. Mr. Alien spits yucky stuff and apparently has wreaked quite the havoc on a planet full of manly prisoners, but all we get is a few dark shots of a guy that looks like its creators wanted to pull off an ALIEN monster, but just couldn’t, so they settled for a monster that drools on cue.

   As a side note, I get that when companies send screeners, it’s in the interest of their product to protect against illegal copying and such. I have no issue with watermarks, warnings, “Property of …” written across the screen—I get you’re protecting your stuff. Making 99% of a movie black and white, in a film in which production value would have meant a lot, is not a wise solution. This was obviously not a movie filmed to be in black and white, and stripping it of its color simply to safeguard against pirating rendered it almost unwatchable in places—when we’re in a dark ship, facing a dark creature, and everything has been dulled to gray, a lot is lost.

   Really, though, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. No one to root for, no story to get into, nothing to redeem this waste of 84 minutes.