Sunday, May 18, 2014

Alien Uprising (U.F.O.) review

WARNING:  I’m going to give away major details.  This is necessary to pick apart the movie.  If you want to watch the movie, which I advise against, I’ll understand if you want to bookmark this page and come back later.


I’ve been reposting a lot of reviews from Epinions, mostly because there are a lot of old reviews that I’d like to get on here.  For example, I have a list of the ten movies I consider to be the worst.  I’d like to repost those ten movies before putting up the top-ten list.  I have gotten around to finishing a few reviews of movies I saw before Epinions closed, but I haven’t been watching a lot of new movies over the past few months.  I finally decided to get back to watching movies and I may have found a new addition to my list of ten worst movies.

The story starts with several friends at a party.  Michael is a lieutenant in the SAS.  He manages to hook up with a hot woman named Carrie.  Robin, his friend, asks Dana to marry him after a three-year courtship, only to start an argument with her.  Vincient, their other friend, drinks a lot, fails at picking up women and finishes his night by puking.  In the morning, they find that anything plugged in doesn’t work; the powers out.  Their cell phones still have a charge, but no reception.  Cars still work, but gas may prove to be limited.

One night, an alien ship appears in the sky.  It doesn’t do anything aggressive, but people freak out.  It’s the sort of looting, robbery and mayhem you’d expect.  It’s decided that Michael and Carrie will go to get bullets for his gun, leaving the others to fend for themselves.  That doesn’t go so well.  Michael and Carrie have to rescue a girl from an accident that they caused.  Also, finding fuel is next to impossible, as the army took all of it.  Then, there’s some vagrant that harasses the others about some bible verse, 24:36.  As if that wasn’t weird enough, the clocks go out at 12:36.

Michael and Carrie get back with the girl just in time to see Dana rescued by some military personnel.  (Some sort of drone was about to do her in.)  Everyone’s about to hightail it out of there when the vagrant shows up again, saying that they’re all in league with the devil.  They have to shoot the vagrant, who accidentally kills Robin.

The rest of the people go off to find a military buddy of Michaels named George.  George is played by Jean-Claude Van Damme.  George’s main contribution to the movie, other than being played by an actor I recognize, is to give the group information.  He has some sort of radio that picks up alien transmission.  He demonstrates by turning it on.  He reveals that he’s had an affiliation with Area 51-type stuff and that the radios are alien technology.

Here’s where I ruin the ending for you.  George and the military people all get killed.  Carrie kills Michael, then gets picked up by the aliens.  Vincent tries to rape Dana in front of the girl right before the power comes back on only to reveal Carrie (or a Carrie look alike) delivering a report that it‘s now safe for humans to come out.  The movie ends with several aliens killing Dana, Vincent and the girl.

I’m not sure how I came across Alien Uprising.  Having Netflix, I have access to lots of streaming movies.  This may have been one that I saved intending to get a quick review for a contest.  Maybe it was recommended to me after watching a Van Damme movie.  Boy, am I sorry I ever found out about this.

It looks like this was the entire run of a television series that was condensed to 101 minutes by removing anything that made any sense.  We are told that there are aliens that look like humans to infiltrate our cities for study.  When the UFO comes in, no aggressive action is taken.  Are they here to study us?  Will they conquer us?  What’s the point?

It’s not clear who strikes the first blow, but I think we’re to assume that a second set of aliens comes to our rescue.  Or is it that a second group attacks us and the first one defends us?  Either way, it’s not clear.  We just see alien ships fighting one another.  George indicates that we’ve known about the aliens for a while, so it’s possible that humans built the ships.

What is the point, though?   With alien-invasion movies, isn’t there supposed to be some sort of message?  Why are they here?  Why do we deserve this?  Is humanity worth saving?  The characters have no redeeming qualities.  Other than the girl, I’m just as happy to see the main characters killed.  They range from flaky to dangerous.  Vincent can’t quite build up the courage to ask Dana out, but ends up attempting to rape her?  Oh, and yes, Carrie is an alien.  At first, she seems to be repulsed by the idea of killing someone.  She’s adamant about saving the girl, but has no problem blowing Michael’s head off.

I was able to watch this through Netflix streaming.  This would be the only case I would recommend watching it, other than if you love bad movies.  (Honestly, I’m surprised that this isn’t on badmovies.org.)  One last thing I’m not clear on :  Why is it called Alien Uprising?  It was released in the UK as U.F.O., which at least makes some sense.  However, an uprising would seem to imply an oppressed group fighting back.  I suppose that it might mean an uprising against the aliens, but humans don’t seem to do much except get killed.  Maybe when my head stops hurting, I’ll figure it out.

No comments :