Coming to DVD Tuesday, February 17th
Cast:
Carlos Bernard as Ritter
Mathew St. Patrick as Seth
Rockmond Dunbar as Kane
Courtney Ford as Sterling
Jeff Licon as Benny
Samantha Streets as Whitney
Directed by Ben Rock
Review:
When it comes to low-budget movies of the sci fi/horror variety, less is typically not more. One comes to expect specific ingredients, like nifty creatures, a little action and generous portions of blood and guts. Excessive yakking often does more harm than good. If we wanted a serious drama, we probably would not be watching something called Alien Raiders.
It is disappointing then that Alien Raiders, the latest from Warner Home Video and Raw Feed, features a whole lot of talking and standing around, and not much else.
Hastings Market, located in the small town of Buck Lake, Arizona, is closing for the night. As the few remaining employees are locking up, a small group of armed men and women storm the store. It looks like a robbery, but there are hints that something else is going on. Someone is videotaping the events (presumably not for YouTube), it is mentioned that “this is where it started,” and a strange-looking man named Spooky is testing each person using some sort of extrasensory perception. Why he is doing this we do not know.
When a cop who just happened to be in the store opens fire, the subsequent shootout forces the gang to use a different testing method. This involves making people drink milk before cutting off their pinky. Meanwhile, the townâs entire police force holds tight in the parking lot out front. Led by big city cop Seth (Six Feet Underâs Mathew St. Patrick), they assume this is all your average hostage situation.
Alien Raiders strives to keep viewers in the dark for as long as possible. This tactic fails for a variety of reasons. What is transpiring is not all that interesting, nor will it be much of a mystery to anyone who has seen at least a handful of science fiction movies. Also, the fact that the entire movie takes place in one location ensures that the action (or lack thereof) becomes redundant in a hurry. Finally, the clues we do get are almost entirely verbal, meaning we never catch a glimpse of anything that might enhance our interest in what is happening. Instead we get seemingly endless blather about people being “infected” and something being “in here” and finishing it once and for all.
Borrowing heavily from genre staples that are obvious immediately, Alien Raiders is as generic as its title. The hallmarks of nearly every single movie that has ever played on the Sci-Fi Channel are here: wildly inconsistent performances, excruciatingly corny dialogue (“the circus come to town early this year”), a recycled story, and clear budgetary constraints.
None of that would not be an issue if something, anything, happened. B movies can be fun, but they have to give us the goods. By the time we actually see what is responsible for all this more than an hour has passed in what is only an 85-minute movie. Even then we hardly see it and it is nothing we have not seen in countless other similar movies.
When all is said and done, Alien Raiders generates a reaction that can be summarized with a simple phrase: what was the point? Dull and routine, one certainly hopes that in the future the boys at Raw Feed are a little pickier when it comes to their productions. More offerings like this will not win them many fans.
