Alien Invasion - Unheimliche Begegnung der tödlichen Art

What I fundamentally don't understand is: A film costs money. Even if it's a low-budget film, and especially then, I think everyone is interested in making the most of the little money they have.

And a film production doesn't just consist of the director. There are many other professionals from the film industry at work. And I don't believe in the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. There are ALWAYS many chefs working in a star kitchen and the food is pretty good. Maybe not everyone likes it, but you see a certain structure, you see professionalism and: you can eat it.

The most interesting thing about this film was the DVD menu. Then the film starts and you ask yourself: Who is going to eat this? And so it continues. If you lack a sense of dialogue and narrative structure, can't identify capable actors or create clichéd scenes, then why do you want to make a film? What is the motivation? And as a producer, do I just want to get rid of money or do I want the film to sell? Can't the producer say something about that? The first five minutes are enough to immediately change the director or script.

I have been working in the film and television sector for years and am familiar with some constraints and unfavorable conditions, but even the films made by the trainees (not film students!) were more professional than this film. (Sorry, Mr. Carreté. But I invested money and time and the film is from 2018. I just expect a little more quality, for things that don't cost money.)

Who reads the script and thinks: This is what I'm spending my money on, the world needs to see this movie! - Please enlighten me.

For a no/low-budget flick, this was better than I was expecting. The basic premise is that "Sara" is an investigative reporter travelling out to the sticks (presumably, in the U.S., though this film was shot in Spain) to investigate unexplained phenomena. There she meets a ranger who warns her about bears in the area that have the habit of attacking humans. Of course, the bears are not the problem. Rather, the source of the mysteries is a semi-abandoned military installation where, it appears, some awful experiments had once taken place. While there are many of the expected clichés, there are some well-done scenes and the story, for the most part, holds together like an X-Files episode. My main complaint was the writing. Sara, played by Andrea Guasch, spends too much time in the last half as the damsel in distress. I thought that was a wasted opportunity, given the interesting (if familiar) role she ends up playing toward the end.

A woman and a forest ranger track an extraterrestrial life-form to an abandoned military barrack in the depths of the forest.

The forest ranger ain't no Rick Grimes as for the woman. Shes going on a forest trek to find an old military barracks dressed for the beach. Her charecter is more dopey than Sarah Connor initially in the first segments of Terminator.

The then there is the mumbling bum.

It's a B movie and a rubbish one at best.

Then theres the guy on the DVD the girl bought. Enough sai Go for a walk or read a book do not watch this garbage.

Horrible , bad graphics, bad story, bad endings . I wish I watched anything else instead of this. Literally anything else .

The 2018 sci-fi movie "After the Lethargy" (aka "Alien Invasion") was, of course, a movie that I had never heard about prior to sitting down to watch it here in 2025. Truth be told, I harbored zero expectations to writer and director Marc Carreté's movie, but of course I opted to give it the benefit of the doubt. The movie's cover was actually interesting enough to make me stop up and take notice.

First of all, the movie had a better production value than I had initially anticipated. So it wasn't the ultra low budget garbage that I had prepared myself for watching, and that certainly counted for something.

The storyline in the movie was a scrambled affair that made very little coherent sense. And it was a struggle to keep feigning an interest in the mess that passed as being the movie's narrative.

I wonder where the movie was supposed to take place, as the license plate on the police car reads "Republic of Somewhere". I kid you not.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and the acting performances were actually fair.

The CGI animated alien was pretty atrocious to look at. And it just ruined the movie, as it looked like something from a 1990s computer game that was discarded for being too fake even back then. A movie about aliens and alien abductions needs to have proper special effects, and "After the Lethargy" just didn't have that, and it worked against the overall enjoyment of the movie.

My rating of writer and director Marc Carreté's 2018 movie lands on a very, very generous two out of ten stars.