2.5 ⭐
Of course this is a B movie. At times it feels it's a few letters after that.
The movie is a bit confusing. It starts showing an alternate history in the 80's but it's so sloppy I sort of questioned if they were actually doing "alternate history", or if they just got their history very wrong. They never explain what's so different either. They're trying to say nuclear war happened, but it's very unclear what that affected. Where the nukes hit. Which should have been way clearer. Especially when you have your characters getting radiation sickness all the time. Having the big exposition dump done by bad child actors in a classroom was a really bad idea.
Even when it's not obviously confusing, characters do and say things that make no sense. Near the end, the movie adds some explanation that tries to explain away major issues. I say "tries" because it does a bad job and causes even more issues than it fixes.
This movie steals a lot of moments and lines from other movies. As a Sci-Fi fan, I noticed about 6 moments that were basically ripped right out of other movies. And no, it didn't feel like a tribute, it felt stolen. And in a bad cringe way. The bad acting just makes it worse. Not only that but it was really unnecessary to rip off those moments.
An example is the main girl is on a ham radio and interrupts a conversation. Then she does the exact line from Star Wars - the one where Han Solo is on the radio in the detention center on the Death Star. That scene here is UGLY!
A lot of those stolen moments were ugly. This movie ripped off so much, that it even copies itself at times. There are scenes of a kid that gets lost and someone finds their stuffed animal. That happens a few times. Different kids and stuffed animals.
Worst of all were the 80's TV show references. There's about 15 scenes where characters reference an 80's show. It was so excessive, that I worried that it would tie into the story somehow. Like a side effect of alien abduction would be that they referenced TV shows or something. The first time it happened makes sense, you're like OK, they're really trying to show that it's the 80's. Then next few times you're like OK, they're going overboard. But every time after that is extreme. Did the writer-director have memory problems?
If all the confusion, bad acting, and more wasn't bad enough, this movie does the "mix up all your scenes and do multiple timelines" thing.
Having multiple timelines and then mixing up your scenes haphazardly doesn't equate to being artistic. It worked for very few movies. It especially doesn't work here. Especially when the scenes and story are are so confusing already.
There's no scenes showing anything really. All the scenes are dialogue in rooms. This movie tries to tell this story of nuclear war, aliens, space travel, Sci Fi world with nuclear fallout, but you never see any scenes showing any of it. Characters talking about the war, or the aliens but you never really see anything. Some footage taken from the real Challenger spacecraft explosion is the most you'll get.
One scene's bad acting was actually punctuated by actual crickets. The scene of people talking outside and the crickets slow their chirping when the actors talk. They're so close the talking scares the crickets. It's off-putting. An additional small trademark of a bad movie.
The only take away I have here is the camera work is alright. No bad angles. Decent use of lenses and angles. Good placement.
