Fromage Fridays #36: Alien Outpost

Intergalactic war has never seen such boredom.

Ever have a desire to explore mankind’s potential reaction to discovering that they’re not alone in the universe by coping with life on an Earth that they’re no longer the sole inhabitants of but found District 9 to have a little too much subtle introspective social commentary?

Look no further, Alien Outpost is here to serve all your dumb bare bones conceived science fiction needs.

In a world recovering from a recently repelled devastating alien attack that would undoubtedly be far too expensive to depict onscreen beyond cheaply produced archival footage, the film frugally follows a crew of photo journalists producing a found footage style documentary on one of the units deployed to weed out and eliminate the stragglers of the invaders before they can calculate a counterstrike of some sort.

Afraid that the ambition of such a concept may exceed the nonexistent production budget? Have no fear, for similarly to the disappointingly terrible “Monsters: Dark Continent,” the film makes the anticlimactic decision to feature human antagonists for multiple sequences of combat that undercut the entire premise of the film.

By the end, you may very well be asking yourself why they even bothered to begin with.

That’s unfortunate because the entire movie gets across a legitimately earnest feel despite ultimately being some sort of bizarre contradiction of science fiction storytelling mechanics.

Despite having poorly shot action and a generally awful usage of shaky cam, the editing and acting of “Alien Outpost” is genuinely top notch. The talent was easily there to make something quaint but substantial. The film is sadly caught in something of an identity crisis that prevents this from being achieved.

  

This is a movie that just simply does not know what it wants to be. Although the camaraderie between the film crew and the soldiers is actually strong and effective, it also feels far too divorced from the science fiction element of the alien war, which in turn lacks the budget or creativity to do anything even vaguely worthwhile enough to justify the faux documentary style of the production.

  

The closest “Alien Outpost” comes to actualizing on its potential besides a mildly diverting climax is a half assed attempt to turn this war into an allegory for American involved conflicts in the Middle East, comparing the tragedy and fallout of the invasion to the aforementioned geopolitical issues claiming that it’s a war that people want to forget, which is so poorly implemented that I found myself wishing the film didn’t even bother with invasion plot, going for a faux documentary on a fictional Middle Eastern conflict exploring philosophical aspects of humanity at war instead.

1 Shatner out of 4

Bottom Line: Too ambitious and polished to call dumb but too poorly thought out to write off, "Alien Outpost" is firmly planted within the depressing limbo of disappointment.