Alien Dawn (2012)

Too much of everything

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Dreadfully Boring

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

For every interpretation of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" — from the radio broadcast and the movies, to the TV series — one could safely rely on consistency: interesting, if not always likable protagonists bearing witness to the near extinction of humanity at the three-fingered hands of aliens motoring around in tripod war machines firing death rays with a distinctive "pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew" sound. In fact, no matter how each version changed with location, hero or narrative device, the ray guns and tripods have been mandatory (often, using the same sound effects Byron Haskin's created for the 1953 movie). And just as consistently, every movie and TV producer since has as least acknowledged H.G. Wells' in a story credit. That is, until Neil Johnston dropped this steaming pile of dark matter onto our planet. Perhaps that's just as well. Why besmirch a great legacy with this amateurish entry? In a jumble of styles — which simply HAS to include some found-footage video journalism — the writer/director lifts from a variety of other sources as well. Most obviously, Dawn of the Dead, and the 1984 version of Red Dawn. Perhaps the only redeeming quality is including the word "Dawn" in the title, so the viewer might mistake this as some kind of homage.You might think that despite the crushing familiarity of the material, you could find a morsel of entertainment. Perhaps you have a fondness for cheaply-rendered 3D and quickly executed After Effects. But if you love clumsy hack writing, this is the movie for you. Betraying even less skill with dialog than he does with with plagiarizing plot, the director creates a world of bickering, unlikeable morons you don't care anything about. And they're often sputtering ill-considered truisms from other films. For example, after one character theorizes that the invading aliens are changing our terrestrial environment to suit their biological needs, a key character solemnly - and unironically - declares, "It's called 'Terraforming.'" Indeed. And Alien Dawn isn't the product of film-making, but rather "movie-forming."

It didn't take long for me to start cheering for the aliens in this one. The acting and writing is terrible and the direction is even worse. The plot is moved along by shaky, flickering news coverage (including clips of President Obama) and by first-person "video diary" footage. It doesn't even seem as though there was a script, just loose direction.You know how some movies are released straight to DVD? This one is released straight to MST3k. Even if Rachelle Dimaria started fighting the aliens topless, it still wouldn't be worth your time, although let me know if that movie gets made. ;) The estimated budget was close to $2M, how many starving people could have been fed instead? Which is why anyone involved with this movie deserves to be fed to the aliens.

Expecting a crappy movie to watch - as mindless background noise - I was happily surprised. Think 'made for Sy-Fy' and you'll know what to expect. The CGI is cheap, but not as bad as expected. It seemed to me be a cheap knock-off of 'Cloverfield' mixed with 'War of the Worlds'.I think the big gripe people have with this was the lack of big-battle drama. Instead we have a small group of people just trying to survive. The acting and dialog unfortunately is so real that it's annoying - lots of frantic yelling at each other in confusion and desperation.Actually, other than the obvious low budget, this was not that bad - give it a chance.I rate it at least 4.0

Every bit of this movie is clichéd and brought nothing new to the genre or made for a gratifying evening in with pop-corn in-tow. The acting is terrible, granted the sfx not bad for a B-grade movie, and the most positive aspect of this movie. It's interesting they show news broadcasts and video feeds and intersperse it into the drama, but for me me this failed to drum up any suspense or emotion when I was watching this movie.I couldn't really relate to any of the characters and found myself becoming impatient as I watched on. It was a 1:20hr movie, but it felt like 3Hrs! I think what I'm trying to say is that there isn't much of a plot. Most of the idea's have been taken from War of the Worlds, Battle Los Angeles and many other movies. All of which executed the drama, suspense much better.Not the worst movie I've seen this year, but lacks drive.