EXTRATERRESTRIAL (BLU-RAY / MOVIE REVIEW)

PRODUCT INFORMATION

DISCS: 1
RUN-TIME: 101 min
ASPECT RATIO: 2.39:1
RESOLUTION: 1080p
AUDIO: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0

SUBTITLES: English, English SDH, Spanish
REGION: A
RATING: 18A
PRODUCTION DATE: 2014
RELEASE DATE: Sept 8th, 2015

Photo credit: Extraterrestrial Facebook Page

PLOT SUMMARY

From The Vicious Brothers, the creators of Grave Encounters, comes a pulse-pounding encounter of the deadly kind.  Still reeling from her parents’ divorce, April  is dragged by her boyfriend and a group of his friends back to the cabin where she spent summers as a child. Her trip down memory lane takes a dramatic and terrifying turn when a fireball descends from the sky and explodes in the nearby woods. The group venture out to the crash site and discover the remnants of a ship from another planet, along with footprints that suggest its alien occupants are still alive. They soon find themselves caught in the middle of something bigger and more terrifying than anything they could ever imagine.

MOVIE

Extraterrestrial begins things with a bang and a flash, as we are introduced to Ginger Snaps star Emily Perkins running away from something. A few loud sounds and bright flashes later, she vanishes into thin air. It seems this isn’t the first disappearance in this local town and it most certainly won’t be the last. 

April, who looks smoking hot in underwear, is tasked with heading out to her recently divorced parents cabin, located in the same small town where all the disappearances have occurred, to take some photos for the sale. She, along with her boyfriend and friends head to the cabin and before you know it, an alien ship crash-lands in the woods and all hell breaks loose. The aliens are pissed off and April and friends are in a fight for their lives, with the only help coming from local nut Travis, played by the amazing Michael Ironside, who’s role is minimal, but welcome. 

Extraterrestrial starts off on the right foot, wasting no time getting to the good stuff. Seeing how you already know what the movie is going to be about based on the title, the story doesn’t hide the fact what or who is kidnapping all these people. We know it’s aliens, the characters don’t take long to realize it’s aliens, so let’s get it on. Sadly though, the movie starts to crumble under its own weight near the end. At first I thought the movie was going to end at a certain point and I thought to myself, wow bravo on the edgy and dark ending. Suddenly though, the flick kept going and going and going. I believe I counted 5 times where the screen faded to black and I assumed the credits would start rolling. When the credits do roll, I was already checked out, so any sort of emotional impact they wanted with the ending was lost on me.

Photo credit: Extraterrestrial Facebook Page

Brittany Allen manages to carry the film, whereas most of the others are meant to be fodder for the aliens probe, although I did enjoy Jesse Moss’ humour he brought to the table with his character Seth. Emily Perkins role seems to be wasted and her story gets cut off abruptly, with no more explanation given as to what is going to happen to her character. The film does have a solid soundtrack running throughout, with a few almost 80s synth style beats pulsating the room. Seeing how the filmmakers are known for doing found footage style work, they managed to put in a few scenes where we are watching things play out through a camera phone. It works for the most part, but the gimmick is dropped midway through the movie and doesn’t return. Personally I preferred if they just dropped it all together and stuck with the film look throughout. 

BLU-RAY

Anchor Bay Canada is a little late to the game with this Blu-ray release in Canada, as Scream Factory had already released the flick back in May 2015. However, it’s nice to see a solid release coming our way in the cold north, as Extraterrestrial carries over everything that the Scream Factory had, which included some solid video and audio, with the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 rocking my stereo big time. Also included is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Subtitles include English, English SDH and Spanish. 

The special features are also ported over, with an audio commentary from Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz, Brittany Allen and Melanie Papalia, a short 8 minute making of, 7 minutes of deleted scenes and finally a trailer. I do have some problems with the Making of, which has nothing to do with the disc, but all to do with some of the nonsense spouted by the directors. First, they are told by the FX company that they shouldn’t make the aliens practical but instead opt for CGI. They are quoted as saying “you just can’t make rubber look real.” I was shocked to hear this. I mean seriously, have they not seen the original Alien for petes sake! The madness doesn’t stop there though. The directors wanted to do an alien movie cause there just hasn’t been a good one done in a long, long time. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure the makers of Attack the Block would disagree.

Photo Credit: Extraterrestrial Facebook Page

BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• Deleted Scenes
• The Making of Extraterrestrial
• Trailer
• Commentary with Cast and Crew which features Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz, Brittany Allen and Melanie Papalia.

VERDICT

I enjoyed Extraterrestrial for the most part. It has some real solid horror elements early one, with the people trapped in the cabin, while the aliens stalk them from outside. It was also fun to see Michael Ironside as a nutjob. However, the movie’s multiple endings really made me check out a little too early, which caused me to end my enjoyment with the movie on a sour note. It is nice to see that the Blu-ray from Anchor Bay is looking fantastic and sounding phenomenal. The features may have your eyes rolling, but the included stuff is a bonus. The flick is certainly going to entertain fans of slimy, gray probing E.T’s, but the ending might put you off like it did me. I still say give it a spin and if you enjoyed it, be sure to pick up the Blu-ray.