76 - Extraterrestrial

    A bunch of college kids go to a cabin in the woods, where they deal with angry aliens.
    I can’t say this is a good movie, but it has been able to stir some conflicted feelings in me.  Mostly, because I can say two things that it has going for it.  I don’t think I’ve seen an alien movie like this.  It plays like a big-budget X-Files approach to the subject, and that’s something pretty fun.  The direction is also fairly good.  There are some inventive shots, and some memorable bits here and there.
    But the bad things just keep getting in the way of the positive things.  The music is intrusive.  I can’t place where I’ve heard these giant booming chords before, but they don’t make things tense.  They just make things annoying.  They might be more effective in a theater though.
    The script is pretty bad.  The dialogue is cliched, and the characters are terrible caricatures.  I’ve seen these kids everywhere else, and they don’t bring anything enjoyable to the show.  In particular, one of the girls looked like she was probably about 10 years older than she should have been to play the part.
    The story isn’t all that interesting.  It amounts to kids dealing with aliens.  Some of them die, eventually a few of them are abducted.  It ends with a “the government is covering things up” angle, which isn’t a terrible direction, except that we just sat through an hour and a half.  I’d like something more original for that much of a time investment.
    The direction did get annoying later in the movie, especially after the alien abduction happens.  A lot of the material there is shot with odd effects and lenses.
    I also found myself wishing that there would be some alien abduction movie that actually explains a sense of purpose behind the alien actions.  I can understand a certain amount of medical curiosity, but what about the social and cultural understanding?  There should be more going on than just probing.
    The one thing that really bothered me was the use of the Magnetic Fields song The Book of Love.  It didn’t fit the moment, the mixing of it seemed weird, and it felt like the director just really liked the song and wanted to shoehorn it in.