ET phoning in
Alien Hunter (2003): 5 out of 10: Is it me or does every movie that starts in Roswell, New Mexico suck. Take Alien mixed with The Thing, mixed with Contact, mixed with of all things On the Beach, The Andromeda Strain, the classroom scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark and a throw in a little Stargate to boot.
Derivative doesn’t even begin to describe this movie. With nothing original plot-wise, they amp up the gore and sex, right? Nope, the gore is a blink and you miss it affair and sex is all tease. (James Spader causally mentions he needs a shower, and the delectable Leslie Stefanson asks to join him. He turns her down. AGGH!)
If a movie ever needed a shower scene to liven things up, this is it. I mean, if you are going to have impossibly good-looking women in white bathing suits wandering around an Antarctica research base, why not go for broke?
With about 30 seconds of actual thrill in the entire movie, Alien Hunter is remarkably serious and slow going for a sci-fi adventure. Needed a much better plot twist to liven it up and the Alien itself is a horribly clichéd artifice and has virtually no screen time for someone who shares half the title.
I also inquired during viewing what is with the Children of the Corn in space motif. (Note that since Jason of Friday the 13th fame, Pinhead from Hellraiser and that Leprechaun have all traveled to space to slay nubile teenagers why not the cornfield?) The characters in the cornfield dress like Logan’s Run extras and I was just waiting for the stalks to come alive and attack them.
That, however, would have been exciting and apparently against this movie’s covenant. The acting is mostly fine as Spader reprises his Stargate role while Stefanson and Janine Eser model the latest in Antarctic beachwear. John Lynch, however, read the whole script and acts the like the insane bad guy well before the story would indicate it.
Alien Hunter is a disappointing derivative slog that makes me pine for a proper Children of the Corn in Space movie.
[…] is a scene in Alien Hunter where James Spader causally mentions he needs a shower, and the delectable Leslie Stefanson asks to […]