Maybe that's what they attempted, an exercise for actors to show they had the acting skill to speak the worst lines that could be written, and make those lines passable.
I wondered first if it was poor actors ad libbing, which I've seen in Louisville productions, bot "no". You can see every actor and actress struggling with clumsy lines. That can't be coincidence.
So the plot? Sci fi creatures killing vulnerable people and people having dreams. And aversion of X files even dumber than X Files (which was a hack TV series about the department of defense hiding the existence of aliens from the public so they couldn't ask for a bigger budget at appropriations time. Yes, this plot is even dumber)
How do you get dumber than a government branch trying to hide the existence of something that would grant them a bigger budget? By elaborating even more on what was dumber about X Files. That people wouldn't want aliens.
There's even an expository line where a lady scientist claims she wanted to believe in God and that she didn't want to believe in aliens, because she believed God made humans in his own image.
Said no one ever.
Because no one wants to believe that. People want to believe in aliens. We have proof of this. The IMDB top 250 presently has 8 movies dealing with outer space. All 8 of those contain aliens. That's what people want. Even I want that. I'm not going to watch an outer space movie sci fi movie with no aliens. Rarely.
Is there an exception? For me, SILENT RUNNING and OUTLAND are about it. And neither are in the top 250. Why? People want aliens!
The writing is definitive of "expository". But I don't consider it totally "contrived". The only "contrived" part is the failure of the military in hunting the creatures. Kind of a "groaner" scene there.
I'll give it points for being an "exercise" for actors. I truly believe that is what this is. An exercise where actors and actresses weren't allowed to alter lines, and instead try to make something of the ridiculous script before them.
