Plot
A young couple have their lovemaking in the middle of
nowhere interrupted when aliens arrive and abduct them both. A cheap tabloid TV
show crew, which specialises in pursuing the unexplained and the occult, is sent
to investigate this incident and travels to a remote island off the coast of
North Wales, which is only accessible at low tide by a narrow causeway. The TV
crew don't believe a word that anyone says - until the aliens arrive. Instantly
knowing they aren't here to make peace, the crew must wait for the tide to go
out and try and survive as long as they can until it does.
Review
Cheap,
good-natured horror films are a breath of fresh air at times, especially after
you've been sat trying to analyse those mind fuck Japanese horror films. And
they don't come much cheaper and good-natured as Evil Aliens, a film
which wears it's heart on it's sleeve at all times. It's a film for geeks by
geeks. And it's a bloody good time! After a hilarious opening abduction (the
anal probe provides a moment of joy for the guy before his ass is ripped
apart!), the film quickly becomes a strung-out bore. Where are the aliens you
will ask? Why the hell are these three seemingly inbred farmers living with
their perky sister in the middle of nowhere? Are Welsh people living on remote
islands like relics from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? The dialogue is
naff, the characters are pretty bland and the film just doesn't seem to go
anywhere. It was at this stage that I made a call. Do I continue to sit through
this drivel and give it some more time, expecting the blood to flow pretty
quickly given how long in the film had already passed? Or do I switch it off and
slap The Evil Dead into my DVD player to remind me how to do a great
cheap and good-natured horror flick?
I opted for the former and decided to stick through. After all, this is the guy
who has seen some seriously awful films in my time, most recently Raging
Sharks and Bog. Surely it couldn't get any worse than those two?
Minds start to wander and attention turns to the clock to see how long is left.
But then the film suddenly kicks into gear and never once lets up till the very
end. The characters suddenly begin to develop personalities and actually get
some decent lines. The aliens show up in force. And the blood starts to flow.
And flow. And flow. Someone switch off that tap of entrails and dismembered body
parts will you! Pretty much every time an alien is killed, there's at least a
hissing of blood or explosion of the cranium! And that's just the generic kills!
There's a seemingly endless supply of aliens for our characters to dispatch with
whatever they can find. In reality only a few costumes were made but the film
does a great job of making you think there's a whole army swarming around the
island. The film at this point becomes little more than a series of funny and
extremely gory set pieces involving the aliens being killed off by the
characters with whatever they can find. Hedge trimmers. Shotguns. Crossbows. At
one point one of the survivors hops on board a combine harvester and proceeds to
clean out a whole field of the extraterrestrial invaders, with the Wurzels'
"Combine Harvester" track blurting out in the background. You can heart the
crunching and squelching of bones and blood as the blades tear the aliens apart.
Who is going to survive and how many aliens will they take down with them? Those
are the questions you'll be asking.
The film isn't obviously without it's problems. For a start,
there's the problem that the whole film is just an exercise in low budget gore and there's
little point to it or structure for that matter. It doesn't bother me at all but
I've read plenty of extremely harsh and negative reviews about this film, criticising the script, the amateurish acting and shoddy directing. Hang on a
minute dudes, do you think Jake West really made this film for you? Cult films
like this are made for the fan boys of the world, brought up on a diet of low
budget trash like Bad Taste. Jake West is no Peter Jackson but it's
certainly not the worst low budget film you're going to see. He makes the best
use of the available tools and does a great job with it. He clearly loves what
he's doing and the passion is evident to see. I would doubt whether or not he
could handle a modestly budgeted, serious horror film but in the realms of the low budget
world, he looks like he can carve out a decent career.
The acting is amateurish though!
I hated the Gavin character. Period. He's a whiny little prick, thinks he knows
everything about aliens and is the kind of guy who gives nerds a bad press. I
think he's solely in the film to explain minor plot details due to a lack of
creativity on the script part. I found him irritating, not funny in the
slightest and just lowered the entertainment of the film every time he was on
screen. It is to my hatred that I must admit one of the funniest parts of the
film was seeing him get it on with a buxom alien wench with three breasts.
Verdict
If you're a fan of films like Bad Taste, The
Evil Dead and Undead, then this is right down your alley. One of the
messiest splatter fests I've ever seen, Evil Aliens is destined to be a
cult classic. People who sit down to watch this aren't casual viewers, they're
genre fans so they're know what they're in for. Just put up with the tiresome
first half and you're rewarded with a massacre of epic proportions!
