- Directed by: William Kaufman
- Written by: William Kaufman, Paul Reichelt
- Stars: Max Martini, Linda Hamilton, Brianna Hildebrand
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJRqK-y77Jg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Shades of Predator, a group of soldiers is abducted from battle to wake up fully armed being hunted down by armed aliens in some kind of large facility. But the guys fight back, find a couple allies, and find out a lot more about where they are and what’s going on. This was really good in every way except the pacing. Ironically the gunfighting action, which should be highly entertaining, drags on a bit here and there, and we both thought a trimming of 15 minutes or so would tighten things up.
Spoilery Synopsis
We watch a space probe as the credits roll. We eventually pass Saturn on the way out of the solar system. The space probe is captured by… something.
We cut to a squad of soldiers on the ground. They shoot a bunch of enemies and announce that the war zone is all clear. No, they get ambushed in the street, and one of them gets shot. It’s all very intense. Suddenly, the music gets scary and the sky turns red. A spaceship appears and kills all the bad guys (the aliens are American?). Then it shoots something different, and all the American soldiers are abducted, probed, and examined.
Later, six of them wake up in slime; some kind of suspended animation process. They know things about the process that they shouldn’t; they can read a strange language. All their ammunition has been reloaded and resupplied. Kelly and Rhodie put together what happened to them, but they don’t remember much.
They start exploring the many tunnels of wherever they are. Reyes crawls through a small tunnel into another passage. They hear screams and go to check it out. They find men butchered and hanging from the ceiling. Then they find a woman hanging as well, alive, and she only speaks Russian. While they’re busy with that, an alien kills Gibbs and wreaks havoc until Rhodie shoots it with the alien’s own gun.
More aliens show up, and it’s soon a running fight. The aliens kill Reyes, but the others get away, briefly. The girl is Ravi, and she explains the situation. They are on the aliens’ spaceship, and the aliens eat meat. Human meat.
The group explores and finds pods with people inside. The group all talks about where they’re from. It’s only a matter of time before the aliens find them, so they want to make a stand. This soon leads to yet another firefight, and this time, the aliens have energy shields. This just goes on and on until the guys end up in a garbage compactor full of skeletons and waste. They come across Anya, Riva’s mother, who looks like she fought a battle with a Terminator fifty years ago.
Anya asks them how long they’ve been awake. She says they were packed away in a trophy room as souvenirs. She thinks she’s been awake for 20 or 30 years. Time is hard to measure there. She says that a 1977 NASA probe told the aliens where to find us. The map was called the “Map of Osiris,” and it was a really bad idea. They crushed Earth in a matter of weeks. The aliens captured all the best military people, turned their minds against them, and used the humans to defeat themselves.
She explains that the aliens are about to contact reinforcements, then they’ll just eat all the remaining humans. There’s only about two dozen aliens left on the ship, and the men want to fight. Kelly and Rhodie fight aliens as Anya, Ravi, and Nash plant explosives in the communications array. Rhodie goes out with a bang as Kelly runs to defend the others.
Aanya gets shot but blows up the explosives, killing lots of aliens. Kelly, Nash, and Riya are all that’s left. Kelly gets knocked out and dreams about his daughter and the alien invasion. Just as he’s about to be executed, Nash comes out of nowhere and shoots the baddies.
Kelly releases dozens of prisoners who run away. Nash cheers about how they did it, and then immediately dies. The big leader alien comes in and seems to want to fight Kelly with knives, of all things. Kelly, on the other hand, uses the fast-moving doors to his advantage and cuts the alien in half.
Kelly and Riya find an exit and see that they’re in the ruins of Paris after the apocalypse, on a spaceship that’s not currently in space.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s a mash-up of a bunch of other soldiers-vs-aliens stories, and it’s overall pretty good. It’s a little draggy, especially during the battles, which is odd. There’s lots of running and shooting in tunnels, and we don’t really get any kind of explanation until Linda Hamilton shows up an hour into the movie.
The aliens are simply one-dimensional monsters with guns, looking all monstrous, and there’s nothing much more to say. At one point, I said they looked “Like Adult Mutant Ninja Turtles,” and never got past that.
This feels like someone played a video game and then wrote a script from what happened. It’s OK, but far from great, and it would have been better with 20 minutes less of it.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s very good, not quite great. As previously mentioned, a little trimming would have improved it. There were also a lot of people getting shot at with heavy weapons while out in the open and avoiding the bullets, which I kept having to work to ignore. But I liked the cast, the effects were great, and there was a decent story. Overall, I liked it quite a bit.