AVH - ALIEN VS HUNTER (2007) - You'd have to be mad to enjoy this Asylum movie.

DIRECTED by Scott Harper

SCREENPLAY by David Michael Latt

STARRING  - William Katt as Lee,  DeDee Pfiefer as Hilary. 

The rest of the cast are so forgettable, I can't be bothered to list them...

PLOT - Whilst out jogging one morning, reclusive washed up writer Lee Custler witnesses what appears to be a meteorite crashing into a nearby forest. Alerting the local police, Lee and the town sheriff go to investigate. Upon arriving at the scene, the craft disgorges a spider-like alien which attacks the two men, killing the sheriff in the process. Lee and a terrified young girl who also witnessed the attack escape into town.

Arriving at a small roadhouse, they encounter Hilary and a bunch of local townsfolk who they attempt to warn. Lee's story is disbelieved until the roadhouse is subsequently attacked by the extraterrestrial arachnid. In the ensuing massacre a second alien shows up - this creature appears to be a heavily armed cyborg warrior. The cyborg and the alien battle it out whilst the terrified survivors flee for thier lives.

It soon becomes obvious that the survivors are trapped in the middle of a private war between the two alien combatants and to have any hope of getting through this nightmare they will have to arm themselves and take the fight to the aliens. Can human ingenuity be any match for a vicious alien predator and the remorseless cybernetic warrior that is hunting it down. Will Lee and his companions survive or will they become mere collateral damage in a deadly feud that has spanned the lightyears of space ?

"NOOOO MAKE IT STOP !!!!!"

DIALOUGE  - Figgis - "It came from outer space, it crawls on the ceiling, it looks like a spider on steroids ! Its an alien !!!!"

PERFORMANCES  - Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I usually list - at least - the main characters and performers who participate in the film I'm currently reviewing.

Not this time...

It's not that the actors themselves are actually that bad, they all make the best with the material that they are given, it's just that everybody is so forgettable. The characters as scripted are so flat, so generic, that they aren't even given a cat in hell's chance to even register as one dimensional let alone achieve the accolade of being fully fleshed out three dimensional characters. Before you say anything - I know that it's standard practice in B-movies to have scant characterisation at times, but you normally at least get a bit of variation in a character - a decent one liner, a cool quirk...something...ANYTHING!!! Here - nothing - all the characters exist in a vacuum, never advancing beyond the initial state of being they are in when you first see them.

 So if the characters are so boring, how can ANY actor put across a memorable performance? Honestly, if you where to give this script to a company of the greatest actors to have ever lived, you'd be hard pressed to produce something watchable.  A group of what look to be daytime soap actors have simply no chance.

Little much more can be said of the two "headline stars". William Katt as Lee wanders through most of the film looking lost and tired. Back in the 70's he was a promising young actor, he worked with Brian DePalma on the screen adaptation of Stephen King's "Carrie" and put in a good performance as Tommy, the school jock who takes Carrie on her fateful prom night date. He was good too in the 80's - being one of the main characters in the "House" series of horror films. He was even, nearly, Luke Skywalker for crying out loud. In AVH he just seems bewildered and burnt out, like he's wondering what happened to his career and all the great chances he had and why he's now reduced to appearing in this pile of crap. It's sad to see.

DeDee Pfiefer - mainly famous for being Michelle's sister - is OK as Hilary, she at least tries to salvage some kind of depth for her character but as with everyone else she's given so little to work with. At one point she's described as a 'badass biker chick' but you never see her even remotely near a motorbike in the entire film. It's all just ascribed meaningless words with no actual context, labelling in lieu of characterisation.

SFX - Lots of substandard CGI which looks like its floating across the screen with no illusion of weight to it. The monster suit for the arachnid alien is actually quite good...

I mean, yeah, he's very, VERY similar looking to another more famous alien xenomorph but at least it looks like a bit of effort went into making him appear suitably horrific. It's just a shame he never really gets to do anything. It's his CGI form that leaps onto his victims and attacks them, the actual physical monster just gets to wobble his head from side to side and wave his praying mantis claws around like he's some kind of extraterrestrial linesman.

If the alien looks ok, what about his adversary - the cyborg or "hunter" as the title would have it ? Well.....

This is him. Shit isn't he. It's just a bloke with bits of a dustbin stuck to his boiler suit and some weird wastepaper bin/lampshade combo stuck over his head. A seven year old doing his first cosplay at his first comic con could do better.

SEX & VIOLENCE - There's some bog standard gore when various people die at the hands of the aliens but nothing particularly memorable. The main problem is that most of the kills either cut away at the last minute or you don't actually see them happen at all. This is another problem that plagues the characterisation in this film - entire characters just simply disappear off screen only to then have another character explain that the aliens killed them. Once more, this serves to completely disconnect the audience from caring about any of these people or to be interested or invested in thier plight. Sloppy and lazy.

RATING  - Nothing about this film works. The script, the characters, the action - all are way below par - even for The Asylum studios who made this film.

Even the location filming is boring - the characters are meant to be fleeing ever deeper into a forest and yet its all clearly filmed in the exact same spot. It's like the filmmakers just walked into thier local park, found a nice little clearing away from the picnickers, said "this'll do" and proceeded to film the entire film right there. You'll honestly get to recognise individual trees popping up again and again. When as a viewer, you feel that you know the background flora and fauna better than the protaganists you're supposed to be rooting for, then you know you're on a hiding to nothing.

I honestly can't defend this film on any level. One of the purposes of this blog is to challenge perceptions of what "bad" movies are, to find even the most flawed gems amidst the slagheap and single out the things that make them worthwhile...I can't do that here. This film is just bloody terrible.

1 poundshop Predator out of 5 - and that single point is only awarded because of the fact that even with its all across the board shiteness, this film STILL manages to be better than the Hugh Jackman starring Van Helsing movie. Let's face it, most things are...

Hmmmm, I actually quite enjoyed ripping this film to shreds...