Alien: Reign of Man

Four super-soldiers, the Eternals, land on a weird planet and are there to fight alien creatures and then somehow activate a machine that will restore the Earth to its old glory. Apparently, the planet is a mess and these four are our last hope.

I love how far we've come with computer generated graphics. Long ago, a great looking sci-fi film meant a huge budget for effects...and there was really no way around this. However, with the quality of computers and software increasing, it's amazing the sort of sci-fi that is being produced on shoestring budgets. Moon is probably the very best of the recent low-budget sci-fi, but Europa Report and Hunter Prey (with a budget under a half million dollars) are also really good looking and entertaining films you really ought to see. Because of this, I was excited to see Alien Reign of Man and I know that it potentially could be a great film even without a big-name cast and fancy effects. Sadly, this did not turn out to be the case....and the problem, surprisingly, wasn't so much the CGI but the script. A fundamental problem with Alien Reign of Man is the constant use of exposition to tell the story...which is just sloppy and took me out of the experience. Instead of telling the viewer that the Earth is on its last legs and the Four Eternals are our last hope in a prologue, the film literally has various characters start explaining this to each other...after much of the action has taken place. Plus, people do not talk this way to each other...ever. Or, perhaps the film could have slowly explained all this but instead significant portions of the dialog are spent having characters explaining to each other what is going on and why! As a result, the film is, dare I say it, rather boring.

By the way, I am constantly on the lookout for good low-budget sci-fi and I would love to hear from you with your suggestions.

Worst writing and direction I've seen in a film in quite a while. Some of the acting was dreadful too, but if the actors had been given a coherent script, with actual dialogue, and something to do besides stare off into space, apparently enraptured by the special effects, some of them might have risen to the occasion.

The FX were decent in places. That's the best thing I can say about the film.

Rather than engage in anything resembling actual conversation the actors were forced to spew plot points. And what little plot there was was disjoint and banal. There were exchanges like... A: "The Order has known of this for some time." B: "The order stole my childhood." A: "The atmospheric parameters are bad." B: "I'm not sure what to do." A: "We'll torture you unless you comply." Really. The "dialogue" just jumps around randomly, while the actors stand almost perfectly still. Astonishingly bad. Oh yeah, one of the actors actually said "You could have got us caught, captured, or killed!" Care to explain the difference between "caught" and "captured" for me? Sheesh. There was also one attempt at poetic speech that came out something like "Floating rock blood." (That's not an actual quote, but the actual line was at least as nonsensical.)

I almost always watch movies to the end, no matter how bad, but I only made it through about 1/3 of this and just had to turn it off. It made my brain hurt and was wasting too much of my life.

I rated this movie a 1, and that was only because I couldn't give it a zero.

On the plus side some elements were well done, like some of the uniforms, planets, while other costumes were really bad. Budget problems maybe? Scenes were well lit while most movies choose almost complete darkness so that was nice.

Yeah the CGI were not all the high end, big budget, type but I liked that. Creatures seemed more alien in movement and they actually looked alien. I'm pretty tired of the high end big budget effects which seem all the same and alien creatures move, act and sound like regular earth creatures. So points for monster creation.

On the negative side, slow...everything. I didn't notice any character development. I couldn't guess what the movie was about.

To be fair I could only make it through the first 25%. Watched on YouTube so I was able to increased play speed 2x and enjoyment was greatly improved. Couldn't understand the dialogue but don't think I was missing anything and I could make up my own.

Films involving aliens admittedly do spark my interest and there are some fun ones out there, and some obvious masterpieces (won't name them at the risk of sounding unfair). Low-budget alien films on the most part do not have a good reputation and it is not hard to see why with most of them being intelligence insulting and making one seriously question how much effort went into it.

While far from the worst case, compared to the attempts especially made by SyFy and The Asylum (and a couple of others), 'Alien Reign of Man' does nothing to convert my general negative feelings on low-budget alien films. It's an incredibly bad mess and came incredibly close to having no redeeming qualities because of how much it does wrong and in a way that's jaw-droppingly awful. Oddly enough though there were a couple of small things that just about stopped it from falling into that category.

'Alien Reign of Man' is saved from total doom by the photography, even if far from exceptional, having some atmosphere and skill and actually not making me nauseous.

There is the odd fair costume and a few effects that look as if effort was made into them.

However, they are completely eclipsed by everything else being so dreadfully done. 'Alien Reign of Man' has a very drab look, and that a vast majority of the costumes are shoestring budget and that the rest of the effects are at best afterthought-looking pathetic further cheapen it, which makes the effort that went into the photography a waste. Editing was choppy too.

The music is too loud, very annoying and doesn't fit with the atmosphere at all, actually sounding like it was written for something else. The sound effects are bizarre and muffled, which does affect the dialogue and the balance between that and the sound. The dialogue is extremely stilted and without any bite, intrigue or urgency. That is when it is comprehensible, unfortunately most of the time it is not.

Something that affects the story coherence too. Further bad news for a story that's already paper thin, slow as molasses (and that is an insult to molasses) and well overdone on the ridiculousness. The characters are like robots in personality and have nothing interesting or distinguishable about them. The direction is pancake-flat.

While the actors are not entirely to blame, they throughout, and without exception, look as unfamiliar and indifferent to the material (characters and dialogue) as the viewer is.

Overall, a couple of small redeeming qualities but generally a big mess. 2/10 Bethany Cox