Alien Raiders (2008) Movie Review

For a genre that’s supposedly built on wild imagination, sci-fi movies about alien invasion tend to be a pretty generic and conformist bunch, both in premise as well as Act I’s. The originality gets progressively worst when it comes to the lower budgeted entries that usually show up as a Movie of the Week on the Sci Fi Channel. Usually, military guys with guns are involved, as are body jumping by the alien invaders of the day. You rarely see a movie about an alien invasion that opens with gun-wielding robbers taking over a supermarket in a small Arizona town, but instead of taking the money, the robbers go around “clearing” people using a psychic. That’s the case with “Alien Raiders”.

“Alien Raiders” stars Carlos Bernard (TV’s 24) as Ritter, the leader of a small band of alien-busters, who take over a supermarket in the small town of Buck Lake, Arizona determined to stop an alien infestation at its source. Their mission: seek out the aliens, hidden inside human host bodies, and kill them before they can spread further. Things go wrong almost immediately, as a cop caught up in the robbery starts shooting, taking out two of Ritter’s team and alerting the police to their activities. The mission gone to hell and the objective still unaccomplished, Ritter is forced to shut down the supermarket, locking himself and a half dozen hostages inside as cops surround them. And oh yeah, with their psychic now dead, Ritter’s remaining crew is forced to seek out the alien infestation the old fashion way, which involves a knife and fingers and lots of screaming.

Usually alien invasion movies consist of two sets of characters – the gun-toting, trigger-happy military types, and the talky, labcoat-wearing civilian types, aka the scientists. “Alien Raiders” combines those two archetypes in the form of Ritter and his team of ex-scientist commandos. They’re former scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who realized that an alien species had crash-landed to Earth on a meteorite a few years back. When no one believes them, Ritter and others take up arms, and begin hunting down the creature from place to place, using impromptu psychics to seek them out. It’s a pretty novel idea for a sci-fi movie, and certainly one that I hadn’t expected given the generic sounding “Alien Raiders” title. Even the film’s DVD cover hints at the movie being little more than a copycat of other sci-fi entries.

“Alien Raiders” is clearly inspired by John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. In particular, there is a long sequence in the middle where Ritter and his team must go through the remaining hostages one by one, “testing” them for infection. The method involves blood, pinky fingers, and a knife. You’ve seen it before, of course, but then again, there’s not a whole lot about the genre that can be considered new anymore. Pretty much everything that can be done has been done, and I have yet to stumble across an alien invasion tale that is overly original. The canceled TV show Threshold came close, with its inter-dimensional aliens. As a standalone film, “Alien Raiders” certainly puts an entertaining spin on an old, oft-told story.

The film’s singular locale is obviously a result of its limited budget, so the action never leaves the supermarket. The screenplay is forced to work around the location, and it does well enough to keep the action moving and the story progressing as robbers and hostages clash and the cops outside get antsy, especially when the head law enforcement guy has a personal stake in one of the hostages. Most of the film’s budget probably went to the special effects, all of the practical variety (CGI costs money). The result is hit and miss, with the miss coming pretty hard and fast whenever we see too much of the creature. Director Ben Rock and his crew are forced to rely on overly done sound effects to remind us that we’re dealing with an alien creature here, one that is very dangerous, because the creature itself doesn’t seem to do a whole lot except run fast and beat people with its deformed hands. No, seriously, that seems to be the full extent of its abilities. Which I guess kind of makes sense, even if it does make for some seriously ridiculous action scenes.

For what it is, “Alien Raiders” works well enough that I would recommend it for people who enjoy this type of low budget sci-fi. The action is fairly decent, the suspense is affecting, and the actors all do decent jobs. Maybe one of the film’s real advantages is that the script never really bothers to fill the audience in on pretty much everyone in the film. What little background exposition we are given is doled out in little snippets, so we’re never really sure about anything or anyone. What were Ritter and his crew doing at JPL when they discovered the alien? And how exactly did scientists, if that’s what they were, learn how to use guns so efficiently? We also have no idea why Ritter hasn’t gone to the military with the evidence he’s gathered, as he and his team seem to have uncovered quite a cache of alien evidence, including the actual aliens themselves. But perhaps even more important, am I really supposed to believe that Kane (Rockmond Dunbar) used to be a scientist? This guy curses like an ex-con with a life sentence, only less pleasant.

But hey, why ask such silly questions? For a movie destined to hit the Sci Fi Channel circuit, you could do a lot worse than “Alien Raiders”. I’d give it a shot if you’re into the genre, but all else should avoid, as you’ll find it mostly lacking.

Ben Rock (director) / Julia Fair, David Simkins (screenplay)
CAST: Carlos Bernard … Ritter
Mathew St. Patrick … Seth
Courtney Ford … Sterling
Rockmond Dunbar … Kane
Tom Kiesche … Logan
Joel McCrary … Tarkey