The Vicious Brothers have put together a film that anyone, who can stomach a stereotypical group of kids in a cabin, will love. At its worst there’s cgi aliens, dumb teens, and redneck cops who are too dumb to see what’s happening, but at it’s best it has every core element of alien abduction stories that drive our fascination and definitely worth a watch.
The film starts out with a mysterious scene that has a great ending and for the hardcore paranormal fans will definitely be a treat. Then our main characters are introduced with the typical archetypes as they’re heading out to spend some time at a home being sold as part of a divorce. Things get weird when they run into an estranged neighbor who, aside from being a huge fan marijuana, would fit into the typical paranoid anti-government individual who spends his time on the internet and watching his radar (yes this guy has a radar the picks up UFO’s!) The only character who really gets the moral character development is an officer who’s wife went missing and as the story unfolds realizes an unspeakable possibility. Every scene with him is pretty good especially how this film uses minor characters to drive the narrative something isn’t right, but our main characters are unaware. The characters are all fun and for the most part fill their intended roles perfectly.
I had expected either jump scares or for the film to show very little of the alien elements, but I was happily surprised. The initial encounter with the UFO’s are excellent and the alien reveal doesn’t pull any strings. The aliens start to fill like an enemy that you don’t know much about, but isn’t being masked by mcguffinite reasons (cloaking devices or magical teleportation,) but instead fit perfectly with everyone’s thoughts on what a tall grey would be like based on real life reports.
The film wraps up pretty well and I have to say I enjoyed it on many levels. The aliens were near perfect to what I’ve always wanted on screen and all the encounters worked really well. The main characters, as I said before, performed their roles, but the really interesting characters were the minor ones. I could’ve just as well enjoyed a film where Travis, the paranoid nam vet, took on the aliens all by himself protecting his property from invasion or the mystery revolving around the mysterious abductions and the local law enforcement.
The film is now on Netflix for anyone interested in a good cabin in the woods with aliens movie.
