Alien Origin

 (2012)

Alien Origin Blu-ray despite great video and solid audio falls short as an overall poor Blu-ray release
Recently discovered footage from a lost military expedition exposes a horrifying truth about the genesis of life on earth.

For more about Alien Origin and the Alien Origin Blu-ray release, see the Alien Origin Blu-ray Review

Starring: Julia Evans
Director: Mark Atkins

» See full cast & crew

Alien Origin Blu-ray Review

Where's the plot?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman, July 1, 2012

Good gosh is this thing just awful beyond all comprehension. Seriously, there's bad, then there's putrid, then there's a whole lot of other garbage, then there's Alien Origin, one of the most disgraceful, shameless, worthless pieces of rubbish ever released. Where to begin? How about that Alien Origin is billed as "recently discovered footage from a lost military expedition [that] exposes a horrifying truth about the genesis of life on Earth." OK, but the only problem is that there's nothing of the sort in the movie. Oh, wait, there is, sorry. It comes as a tacked-on "epilogue" that features a character suddenly blabbering about Neanderthals and Denisovians and the aliens in the movie (which are never seen save for a flash of the image that's located on the box) all somehow being genetically similar. Ta-da! The Asylum may now connect this movie to Prometheus, and, hey, why not use an Alien-like font on the title. What appears to have happened is that The Asylum made a movie about "lost footage" of "soldiers running around the jungle and fighting unseen aliens" but realized that there was no plot, no selling point. So they just tacked on a cheap thirty-second epilogue to "tie it in" with a major release. Disgusting, repulsive, insulting cinema, everything The Asylum is known and reviled for is encapsulated in this movie. There's nothing wrong with making cheap movies and, hey, some of the cash-ins are even kind of fun, but to just randomly add to the end in order to sell the movie is a whole different kind of scam. People should really take note and make all effort to avoid this one on principle.

What are we doing here again?

If one may call it a "plot," it goes something like this: in October 2011, a reporter, er, scratch that, an "adventure journalist" named Julia Evans (Chelsea Vincent, Paranormal Incident) and her daring camera crew fell in with a Belizean special forces unit, accompanying them on a jungle training exercise. The entire party vanished without a trace (scary!). No remains have been found, but searchers did unearth various video logs of their adventures. The film purports to be made from this found video. In it, Julia and the soldiers come across various oddities: a boat in the middle of the jungle, more than 100 miles away from water; strange markings on trees; and even an unidentified flying object in the jungle, to which they react as if stumbling upon a large treehouse, not a vessel from another world. The unit receives word from command that their mission has changed, and they are now to locate and retrieve missing British and American archaeologists who have discovered alien remains. Along the way, Julia and her group will encounter hostile aliens against whom they battle in a running firefight. And because it's convenient for the marketing, they will somehow be able to figure out that these aliens share a genetic structure with mankind.

First, the "found footage" schtick is getting really tired. And now, with Alien Origin, it's hit a low in that the found footage has no plot. This is basically a camera crew following around a few wannabe "special forces" guys who, for the first half of the movie, walk around the jungle, look at things like odd carvings in trees that weren't there the night before, and talk to people about nothing, and in the second half, they run around the jungle and shoot at aliens (presumably aliens) firing at them from the cover of dense foliage, firing something that seems akin to a rocket launcher. But much of it is done under the cover of night vision, which both masks any shoddy special effects and allows the pyrotechnics department to play with muzzle flash and tracer fire, which gives the illusion of more action than there really is. That's what passes for the movie. It's ninety minutes of nothing, almost literally. It's terribly slow, but hey, it ends with the "cool" quick shot of the alien skull flashing across the screen, so it must be awesome. And not only is it boring, but the "found footage" features its own "found footage," as in the people in the primary found footage watch additional found footage. In this footage, the "archaeologists" discover an alien skull. They handle it as they might a product at Target, just nonchalantly picking it up with bare hands; so much for preservation of such an important find. It's not even that stupid little details are ignored, it's that Alien Origin fails to achieve anything remotely resembling real life. If the movie had been made on the fly it would have been better than this; to be this bad, it almost had to try.

Of course the acting is also terrible. All of the soldiers appear to be trying to mimic their heroes in Platoon and Predator, and they fail. There's even a guy who "senses" that something is following them, sort of like the "Billy" character in Predator. Except there it made sense, here it just feels like ripping off Predator, and even then only because the movie needed a few more minutes tacked onto the end runtime. In the movie's defense, there's one brief scene that proves halfway -- OK, maybe more, or that could just be that is seems pretty great next to everything else -- interesting: it's more "found footage within the found footage," this one showing a boat being sucked up by an alien craft, and a man screaming in sheer terror. At least that's what it seems to be. It's difficult to tell, really, because it's just so shaky and splotchy, but it does manage to create a fairly genuine and creepy vibe. It's too bad the rest of the movie -- even part -- couldn't follow suit. In fact, it might have made for the beginnings of a fairly cool "found footage" movie had the entirety of Alien Origin been about someone's first-person experiences aboard a UFO, captured from his or her helmet cam or something (and, as usual, Asylum, send royalty checks this way for any idea stolen from a review). As it is, Alien Origin is an abysmal failure even for The Asylum. It's actually worse than War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave; at least that one had a semi-coherent plot. And considering that the studio had in recent weeks released a few fair movies (relatively speaking) in Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies and American Warship, Alien Origin comes doubly disappointing.

Alien Origin Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Alien Origin's 1080p transfer is green, so very, very green. There's bright green vegetation, green camo uniforms, and green-tinted night vision shots. Everything green, and about the only green the movie lacks are little green men (or lanky gray men or any other kind of aliens). The Asylum's 1080p transfer does present that myriad of greens with evident stability and accuracy between the shades, and those handful of hues within the mix that aren't green also appear accurate and pleasant. The HD video source appears consistently flat and glossy; it's a midlevel sort of HD shoot, one that's not bottom-barrel poor and certainly not quite as polished as the digital shoots coming out of the big studios' major blockbusters; give The Asylum credit for not totally cheeping out on the photographic equipment. But fine detail impresses, generally; leaves and tree textures are strong, as are crisp military uniforms, facial details, rusty surfaces, and dents and scratches on well-used vehicles. The image enjoys an evident crispness and general stability with its HD footage, and wear and tear is present only on the deliberately "lower grade" sources seen throughout the movie. There are a few scenes, notably in chapter eight, that jump and skip; given the nature of the program, it's difficult to say whether those are a fault of the disc or transfer or inherent to the film, but it appears to be the latter. Light banding is evident in a few spots, but this is otherwise a rock-solid transfer given the circumstances and what the film purports to be.

Alien Origin Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Lately, The Asylum's been pretty good about including Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks rather than mere 2.0 mixes (wait, what is this, 1998?) on their video releases. Oddly, Alien Origin features only a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack (and note that the packing advertises a DTS High Resolution track which isn't included). Initially, this doesn't seem like an oversight. It's always seemed a bit odd that these "found footage" movies, shot on lower grade equipment and presumably making use of a built-in microphone or, maybe, a boom mike as the case may be here, feature theater-quality, multi-channel, precisely-engineered sound, case in point being something like Cloverfield. Granted, the sound enhances the viewing experience, but it doesn't seem all that authentic. So perhaps The Asylum got one thing right and went with a "realistic" track for this release, but then there's the case of the missing soundtrack. The disc defaults to the two-channel Dolby Digital offering, but change the audio option via the remote control or the player's menu screen and there's another option, albeit an option with nothing on it. Either someone goofed and forgot to add what might have been the Asylum-standard Dolby Digital 5.1 track or maybe that listed DTS HR track channel track, or aliens have taken over the BD replication process over at The Asylum. But anyway, it's not as if it matters, the movie stinks, and anything positive coming out of the soundtrack is merely gravy, anyway. As it is, the Dolby Digital 2.0 track isn't half bad. It's often active and energetic, fairly clear and surprisingly entertaining. Gunfire defines the entire second half, and while listeners won't feel completely drawn into the running firefights, the rattling sounds of automatic weapons fire do impress with presence and authenticity. Atmospherics are sufficiently recreated, general jungle din such as chirping birds and rustling leaves doing a fair job of sonically replicating the film's natural environments. Additionally, various mechanical, industrial-like sounds aboard the spaceship play with sufficient presence. There are a few instances of the boom mike crashing up against branches and what not, yielding a somewhat muffled sound that only adds to the "authenticity" of the experience. Dialogue can be a little hard to understand at times, but in general spoken word clarity suffices. This isn't a great track, but those who listen should be satisfied with the general elements found within.

Alien Origin Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

All that's included is a selection of trailers for various Asylum films, including Alien Origin. Of course, it comes with the stop-and-start DVD menu screen.

Alien Origin Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

It would seem The Asylum has some 'splaining to do. Alien Origin is by far the worst movie they've ever released, taking their schtick to a new low and foregoing even plot, the movie instead just following soldiers around the jungle with no real purpose in mind, no characters even basically fleshed out in the developmental stages, and the "angle" simply tacked on at the end of the movie with no explanation of where in the world the "alien origin" scientific conclusion even came from. It's not odd, not different, just downright insulting and stupid. For those who just have to see it simply because it's in the top grouping of all-time worst movies, The Blu-ray features good video and audio. However, most people should avoid this one.