Altered (2006) Review

Altered (2006)

Director: Eduardo Sánchez

Writers: Jamie Nash

Stars: Adam Kaufman, Catherine Mangan, Brad William Henke

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1 Hour, 27 Minutes

Altered (2006)
Altered (2006)

A van pulls up in the woods, and it’s got three heavily-armed hunters inside. They’re looking for something that we see dodging behind various trees. One hunter gets his foot caught in a bear trap, and the creature falls into a pit-trap. They end up capturing the thing. They figure the alien ship is going to follow them, so they get off the road.

Wyatt hears something outside and freaks out. It turns out it’s Otis, Cody, and Duke, and they have the creature with them. Wyatt wonders if it’s alive, since “If you kill it, the rest are going to come and put us all down!’ It’s been fifteen years, since the incident, and nothing they do will bring back Timmy.

They argue, and the thing wakes up. It bites Cody. Wyatt grabs his own head; he’s being psychically attacked somehow. Wyatt yells that it’s sending a signal, and they cut it open and remove the organ in its intestines that is sending the signal. Wyatt knew about the signal because he, too, had one of those things inside him.

Hope, Wyatt’s girlfriend, comes in, and the alien hypnotizes her. Everyone screams over everyone else for a while. They tie her to the bed, and start securing the building. Duke explains to Wyatt that they’ve been trying to catch one of these things for about seven years.

Cody injurs himself, and while cleaning the wound in the bathroom, he finds that he’s badly infected with some icky alien disease. Wyatt admits that whatever Cody has is what killed Timmy fifteen years ago. The alien gets loose just as the sheriff comes banging on the door; the girlfriend called him before things got crazy.

Then it disembowels Otis, and things get messy. The sheriff also dies. Wyatt and Hope try to drive Otis to the hospital, but they know it’s too late for him. They also have the alien in a box in the back of the van. Wyatt explains that if they kill even this one, the aliens would wipe out every single human. The aliens just kept experimenting on him; they altered him. He thinks they came back specifically for him. He stops the truck, and he says they’re surrounded.

Duke remains behind and talks to Cody through the bathroom door. We find out now that he switched the sheriff’s body for the alien. Duke remained behind there at the garage, to torture the thing.

Wyatt leaves the van and heads off into the woods. They surround him almost instantly, but don’t mess with him. He continues back to the garage, where he finds Duke’s body. The creature then attacks Wyatt, but fails to remember that Cody and Hope aren’t quite dead yet. Will Wyatt escape, or is it the end for both him and humanity?

Commentary

Wyatt explains the situation to Hope and she still gets moody and walks off into the darkness, where she’s been told there are many of them out there. Not realistic unless she’s way stupider than she appears.

There’s a lot of intestinal gore in this, and Cody’s disease is pretty well done too.

It takes a long time before we get a look at the alien, but when we do, we see it’s a very well-designed practical effect. There is plenty of room for a sequel, since the aliens could still return for Wyatt, and it looks like he may have a way to attack them back telepathically.