Alien: Rubicon

I give all movies an opportunity, but this was a colossal waste of time. The misleading title sucks you in to a vortex of bad scriptwriting and worse acting. This was not a film worth watching. The plot was bad, the acting was worse and there wasn't one redeeming thing about this film. It would have been much better if they had made a film about a sphere that landed in the New York harbor and no one had an idea what it was there for and the threat it posed. As soon as they attached Alien to it they changed everyone turning it on expectations. You sat there waiting for at least one alien to appear.

That headline-question is always the last silly line of defense for an otherwise indefensible piece of garbage.

But in this case, the truth is: YES! Easily!

I bet every third person on earth could do better than this. There is no tension, no build up, no basic understanding of storytelling mechanisms at all. It is just 2,5 boring sets where the same five boring characters have stiff, unorganic dialog about a crisis that never feels like anything, because this is the reverse of "show, don't tell!" - all this movie does is tell, and poorly so. It's not even funny bad, not campy in an amusing way. It is just poor. If you want to look at something extremely poor and low effort for 90 minutes this is THE movie for you. Everyone else, stay clear! There is absolutely no entertainment to be had here.

I've enjoyed some of The Asylum's movies and have to admit their special effects have gotten better. Many times their movies fall into the so bad and ridiculous they are great category, but unfortunately this is not one of them. For all it's OK effects, 99% of this movie is just actors standing around in a room talking about the action. If you've seen the trailer you have seen the entire minute of good stuff in this fiasco. As usual there is some LOL absurd dialogue but not enough to make this enjoyable. While watching this and being bored by it I did wonder what these actors do when they get a call telling them they got the part in a movie from The Asylum ? Cry ? Laugh and curse fate ? Wonder how they're going to spend the $45 paycheck ? Not worth watching.

When I stumbled upon the 2024 movie "Alien: Rubicon" here in 2025, there wasn't even a moment's doubt in my mind that this was a mockbuster from The Asylum. Now, I hadn't even heard about the movie prior to watching it, so I had no idea what I was in for. But the movie's cover, which was quite nice actually, and the movie's title just screamed The Asylum to High Heavens.

And true enough, this was indeed a movie from The Asylum.

I have to say that writers Glenn Campbell and Tammy Klein didn't really put together a particularly thrilling or exciting script and storyline. And sitting through "Alien: Rubicon" proved to be somewhat of a challenge of wills. And to make things even more dragged out, director Adrian Avila spends a lot of the movie's run time of filming Preston Geer (playing Dr. Jeff Morrow) and Paul Logan (playing Captain Sean Jeffe) as they sit in a helicopter cockpit following the unidentified sphere around. And it grew rather tedious and boring quite quickly.

The only faces on the cast list that I was familiar with was Michael Paré, Paul Logan and Lindsey Marie Wilson. The acting performances in the movie were fair, but nothing outstanding. Truth be told, then the actors and actresses didn't really have much of any solid material to work with.

Visually, then I will say that The Asylum definitely upped their game. The CGI effects in the movie were quite good for a The Asylum movie. But it just wasn't enough to make up for the lackluster script and storyline.

I doubt that even the most hardcore of sci-fi fans will get a kick out of watching "Alien: Rubicon".

Actually, the best thing about this movie was actually the cover, sad fact, but true. And you see the aliens for maybe 2 seconds in the entire movie. Unbelievable.

My rating of director Adrian Avila's 2024 movie "Alien: Rubicon" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Like another reviewer I thought it was something to do with the Aliens franchise but this movie doesn't even deserve the title of movie, instead it should be called a hodgepodge of how not to act. All the main actors were over doing their roles, especially the man playing the helicopter pilot. Possibly the only actor who played their role correctly was the daughter, she sort of held back her "enthusiasm" and seemed the most normal.

Some of the special effects were good, possibly the only saving grace, though someone needs to learn how to do explosions properly.

All up a waste of money and time.