Alien invasion, but no British invasion...innit.

zero-bob

score 4/10

Where to start. Unoriginal alien invasion plot? Uninspiring tone? Bad dialogue? No, let's start at storytelling 101 - the characters.

The hero characters that you are meant to empathise with are essentially teenage narrow-minded thugs; not the best choice in terms of storytelling as few people would empathise with them, but I thought they might do something interesting with them later in the story to get you as the viewer on their side, but alas they didn't.

The characters are poorly established. Characters seemed to come and go for the first two thirds of the film making it very unclear which characters the film is actually focusing on, never mind establishing a protagonist.

Which brings me on to my next point. Why establish your protagonist and outline their background towards the end of a film? You need to establish an emotional connection between the protagonist and the audience early on, and then reward / emotionally toy with the audience throughout the rest of the film. This is what makes films enjoyable to watch.

The film generally consisted of the kids spouting lines that they deem clever with such consistency you start to wonder whether they are doing it for effect or the director actually thinks the lines are truly funny. Only towards the end stages of the film did I even start to find the dialogue mildly funny. Their London "gangsta" accents will grind on you throughout the film without fail however, so don't think a few funny lines will rescue you from this.

The plot was basic and predictable. Basic I can forgive, as there's no need to over-complicate a storyline as it can diminish it's impact, but the fact that it took the path of least resistance to the end wasn't so forgivable. The only aspect of the plot I liked was that the woman who the kids mugged was forced to team up with them to defeat a common enemy, which provided some interesting tension and humour.

The only thing I truly liked about the film was that the aliens were really black, really really black. So black in fact they almost aren't there. This was believable in terms of the evolution of a species which required camouflage and a cool little feature of the invaders. Aside from that I'm really struggling to find anything good to say about this film, apart from one or two funny lines as I've already mentioned.

In short, it wasn't silly enough to fall into the slapstick horror category, nor was it structured well enough to even be considered an average film. I'm mystified as to how this film has gained a 7.5 IMDb rating at the time of writing this review.

zero-bob 25 May 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2433567/