Here’s a modest but satisfying old-school B movie from Warner’s erratic but sometimes impressive “Raw Feed” strand. Unoriginal but tidy and efficiently done, it does almost everything right, making inventive use of a confined backdrop and garnering suspense out of a simple, familiar scenario. Perhaps its only major annoyance is the over-use of the now-passé shaki-cam style that has become so annoyingly prevalent in contemporary movies inside and out of the horror genre.
It’s Christmas in the small Arizona town of Buck Lake. The flick unfolds in and around a supermarket, immediately echoing the recent, outstanding Darabont / King collaboration THE MIST. Just as the store closes for the night, a team of gun-toting hard-nuts led by Carlos Bernard (as intense here as he is as Tony Almeida in 24) take the few remaining staff hostage. They’re on a mission to locate a dangerous, extra-terrestrial contagion they have tracked all the way to Buck Lake. As they try to find the precise source – by severing the pinky fingers of test subjects – SIX FEET UNDER’s Matthew St Patrick is a hostage negotiator trying to ease the escalating situation ; he’s also the step-dad of the young cashier trapped inside.
Sharp looking considering its very modest budget, ALIEN RAIDERS wears its influences on its sleeve, though its occasional touches of humor arise naturally from the situation and its unobtrusive fan-boy nods are likeable rather than irritating. The taut script deftly blends gory body horror, hostage thriller and sci-fi, while riffing on John Carpenter’s THE THING, particularly during an extended variant on its unforgettable blood-test set piece ; here with an admirably potent pay-off.
The dialogue subtly quotes directly from other modern classics : listen out for an echo of HALLOWEEN’s “I shot him six times!” and a wryly amusing nod to GREMLINS’ “Now I have another reason to hate the holidays…”.
It unfolds at a brisk pace, with just the right amount of back-story, and some nice ideas along the way, including the concept of “spotters” – characters who were once infected by the alien contagion, didn’t “take” and are now needed to spot the extra-terrestrial presence. There’s nothing exceptional or amazingly new here, but it’s nippy all the way up to a cool, downbeat twist ending revealing the identity of the “King” alien.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
