Evil Aliens


Title: Evil Aliens
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi, Comedy
Starring: Emily Booth, Jamie Honeybourne
Director: Jake West

“What are you boarding up the windows for? Have you never seen a zombie film? You know that never works”


I do love films that are precisely what they say it is; this is a British film about evil aliens. Now, I know most probably aren't familiar with British horror beyond maybe 28 days later, so instead I want you to think of this as more akin to Peter Jackson's early splatsick work; low budget but with buckets of blood and no shortage of witty remarks mocking standard horror conventions. In fact, drop in “2001 Maniacs” and their film crew and pit them all against Predator, blend it all together with Braindead's lawnmower and and you probably aren't all that far off.

It doesn't take long before we're treated to our first glimpse at the gore to come in the form of an anal probe (note: I'm pretty sure it wasn't really a probe) as we learn of the two young Welsh love birds abducted whilst high and horny. Enter the field crew of a bad Sci-Fi TV show (and one rabid fan) who travel across to the small isolated Welsh home to interview the only surviving abductee, now claiming to be pregnant. Given a warm reception by the three local Welsh boys that speak no English and with a fetish for blood, they quickly team up with the travellers when the indisputable truth finally emerges: that they are not alone.

With a brief role from Norman Lovett, whom you probably know as “Holly” from Red Dwarf, none of the cast are anything more than the budget cast they were needed to be. Complete with atrocious acting and apparently forgetting about the injuries accumulated, they inject their own little bit of fun to the proceedings and there's no dead weight amongst them in this regard. That game of guessing whose going to die first without putting up a fight disappears when you realise that even the most feeble looking characters get their chance to blow someone's head off, decapitate something or impale it in a bloody frenzy.

It's not so much a simple horror film as it is an all out war between the two sides with limbs being lost left right and centre. And amidst the sea of Star Trek jokes, Jaws quotes and Evil Dead homages the piece plays off like a film nerds 'spot the reference' game, and even though the jokes don't always work that's a minor quibble compared to the overarching fast paced plot. Between mocking other horror films it throws in scenes of originality to ensure that even when you aren't laughing you're nothing if not entertained, and that is after all what I really wanted from this film; to be entertained. There's hardly anything prophetic or deep about a bunch of aliens garotting people but gore hounds will find this simple formula supplies plenty of old school effects to keep them amused.

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