Alien Undead (2010)

I remember years ago when I was sucked into the world of Resident Evil on my Playstation and couldn’t wait to get another fix. Something that had the same mix of gameplay and thrills. Something that was of similar quality. A friend of mine gave me Overblood. He had good intentions but the game was pretty dire. It was trying to be comparable to Resident Evil but it couldn’t hold a candle to my favourite zombie shooter when it came to plot, characters and graphic design.

I start with that memory because Alien Undead reminded me of it. The movie rips off numerous other movies from, funnily enough, Resident Evil to Alien to Pandorum. And it can’t hold a candle to any of them.

There are a bunch of people in a research facility with nasty flesh-eating creatures trying to eat their flesh and be all nasty to them. The people argue amongst each other, wander around numerous vents and try to force viewers to swallow some of the worst dialogue I’ve heard outside of Sunset Beach.

The acting is uniformly terrible, whether it’s Tonia Renee in the female lead role, Bret Kennedy as one of the many tough guys or Dirk Foulger as the stereotypical scientist with a hidden agenda.

Gregory Connors directs in a way that fails to hide many of the film’s failings. Sets are all too familiar and poorly shot in an attempt to make then look different, the sound design is lacking and too much time is wasted on repetitive arguments that seem to pop up every 5 minutes.

But who’s to blame for the writing? That would be Gregory Connors again. Yep, the director also wrote the thing and, surprise surprise, also gives himself a small role in the movie. Hopefully he’s not encouraged to make anything else after this one, unless he learns a hell of a lot in the meantime.

The film doesn’t quite do badly enough to warrant the lowest ratings available, however, thanks to some good special effects, impressive gore and a finale that comes close to being decent despite the poor acting from everyone involved. Still not really worth giving a watch though.

Alien Undead is available on DVD now. The disc features a reasonable presentation of the film, trailers for The 7th Hunt (which looks awful and like it was made for the price of a case of beers), The Harsh Light Of Day (which could be interesting but could be terrible), Umbrage: The First Vampire (reviewed here), a trailer for the main feature, a reasonably enjoyable 25 minute “making of” piece and a short film entitled Netherworld that turns out to be slightly better than the actual movie it accompanies.

WRITER/DIRECTOR: GREGORY CONNORS
STARS: TONIA RENEE, BRET KENNEDY, OZZIE DEVRISH, ROSLYN VAN DOORN, DIRK FOULGER
RUNTIME: 97 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: AUSTRALIA

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