The Vicious Brothers' (of Grave Encounters "fame") Extraterrestrial is not friendly like E.T. The ET's here are less of the fat Reese's loving little guys and more of the killer gray man variety. Generally speaking, they don't *like* to kill people, but when our group of kids manages to piss them off, it's open hunting season on our cabin-dwelling friends.
You get a pretty standard slasher set up in Extraterrestrial. Five kids go out to a cabin in the woods, and shit goes down. Technically, they are there so final girl April (Brittany Allen) can take pictures of the place so her recently divorced parents can sell it. She thinks it will just be a nice weekend alone with her boyfriend Kyle (Freddie Stroma), but he's got a different idea and invites a few friends along for the ride. They hang out at the cabin, get wasted, and generally have a good time. And then, aliens crash, do their hunt/abduct thing... and, movie.
I was initially pretty wary of the film - after a pretty good opening sequence, we meet our characters and they seem really grating, right off the bat. This is especially true of Seth (Jesse Moss) - Kyle's emo-hipster douchey friend. He's obnoxious enough to literally derail the whole thing. But luckily, his character is managed well. Seth is around quite a bit, but his time is divvied out evenly and he actually manages to grow on you a little bit. And it doesn't hurt that he gets some of the best lines in the film. And this is the trend for mostly every character - nobody ever rises above generic monster fodder, but it's the rare slasher-esque horror movie where the characters get less annoying as time goes on.
Really, there's not a lot of ingenuity on display in Extraterrestrial - they hit all of the beats and alien stuff you expect them to (animal mutilation, anal probing... the aliens even look pretty generic, although they are really tall, which gives them a nice imposing look). Generally speaking, there just isn't anything too new here. But luckily, it's executed will enough that you can kind of give it a pass. The special effects are well done for a modestly budgeted film, the action scenes are decently staged, and you get a nice treat when Michael Ironside shows up as a paranoid pot farmer who has a little insight into the UFO phenomena.
That's not to say Extraterrestrial is great though. I thought it went on quite a bit too long - it runs a little over 100 minutes, but 80 would have been perfect for me. And not like they needed to edit it or anything... I just could have done without the last 20 minutes of the film. I won't spoil it or anything, but they go to a place I just didn't need them to go, and it would have made sense to me to just call it a day.
My main note after watching the the film was "subtle like a sledgehammer." Extraterrestrial a loud and brash movie that doesn't really do anything gracefully. This should comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Grave Encounters films (which I mostly liked). I think it's more the style of The Vicious Brothers (the directors) - they've got an in-your-face thing going on that may be too aggressive for some viewers. I'm personally not sold on it - while I think that style makes for some okay movies (I've mostly liked all three of their films), I don't think you can really make a great movie with your foot on the gas pedal the whole time, you know? Things have to have an ebb and flow to them, and I just don't really get that here.
Oh, hi doggie!
Name: Rusty
Breed: Golden Retriever
Function: Uh... bark and be cute. And give the kids a reason to break into a fenced off area (Rusty runs into it, you see)
Fate: Totally dies, killed offscreen by an alien. You see his mutilated body a bit later - it's kind of gross but nothing terrible.
Overall, Extraterrestrial is a decent little diversion. It won't blow you away, and you'll probably get a little deja-vu considering the fact that it's not very original. But still, it looks nice and is mostly-well done. It does the job, I guess.
I would pretty much recommend this film.
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