Altered: Les survivants

The scared rednecks Duke (Brad William Henke), Otis (Mike C. Williams) and Cody (Paul McCarthy-Boyington) hunt and capture a dangerous creature in the Nixon Farm and drive to the isolated house of their friend Wyatt (Adam Kaufman) to ask what to do with it. They recall that fifteen years ago the quartet plus Cody's brother Timmy had been kidnapped in the Nixon Farm and submitted to experiments by aliens and Timmy did not survive. Nobody in town believed in their words and Cody was accused of killing his brother. However Wyatt advises them to not kill the alien since he could be tracked by his breed and they would jeopardize the human race. But the powerful extraterrestrial being controls the mind of Wyatt's girlfriend Hope (Catherine Mangan) and brings horror and death along the gruesome night.

"Altered" has a confused and boring beginning since neither the situation nor the characters are well developed by the screenplay. Further, the stupid trio of characters that open the film is non- charismatic. However, after 30 or 40 minutes running time, there is an explanation and the viewer finds that "Altered" is an original sci-fi story with touches of horror and the plot finally becomes interesting. In the end, this is the typical low-budget movie that uses few locations and special effects that works. Based on my experience, I suggest the viewer to give a chance to this film and he or she may like it. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Aterrorizados" ("Terrified")

Although it would be a stretch to call it original, Altered doesn't feel as derivative or as terribly schematic as so many similar features do. Bearing some occasional resemblance to Night of the Living Dead, with a touch of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, and maybe a set up similar to John Carpenter's Vampires, director Edwardo Sanchez (who delivered the almost unforgettable Blair Witch Project) crafts a sufficiently effective creature feature, which may be silly, but doesn't feature a dull moment.

For seven years Cody, Duke, Otis and Wyatt have been hunting a mysterious race of Alien hominids which dwell in the shadows outside civilization. On the night that they capture a live one for the first time. They bring it home unconscious, but soon realize that they have made a big mistake. First of all, if they kill this creature, his buddies may declare war on humanity. If they don't kill it, the thing could escape and either brainwash or kill our heroes (the only ones who are even aware of the alien's existence)

Altered grabs your attention from scene one, and it maintains stability, but the climax isn't quite as solid as the rest of the film. The manner in which the last twenty minutes play out are the result of one coincidence or contrived moment following another. Of course it could have been worse. Sometimes these movie fall to pieces when trying to bring the stories to a conclusion. Some films don't even have a conclusion at all. (I won't give any names) I will say this for the climactic finale, The make-up job is sensation as we get to see the creature show us the full works, and the scene ends with a sensational wide shot of a spacecraft unlike anything I've seen since maybe Star Wars.

Altered concludes on a note which hints that there could be a sequel. One may doubt that something as small as this will see a follow-up movie, but lets not forget that even Uwe Boll's movies like Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark (which most critics put on the worst films of the decade list) have somehow managed to get funding for even worse sequels. The point being, is that the idea of and Altered 2, doesn't sound so dumb, and considering that the film is surprisingly enjoyable, it might be interesting.

What Altered lacks in budget, it makes up for in atmosphere and tone. The story follows the lives of four men who were abducted by aliens as children. The fifth member of their group was killed during this event. Three of the men have spent the last 15 years of their lives trying to capture one of their captors. To their surprise, they manage to do so! However, capturing the alien is as far as their plans have ever gone. What to do with this being becomes the focus of the story, as well as revealing the back story of their past through heated dialogue. Their alien hostage proves to be far more dangerous and menacing than they ever expected. It seems that all horror films these days tend to inject ridiculous humor into their script. Altered stays on point, the serious tone remains throughout the entire film. This was a rare and welcome surprise. This film also manages to do something with its characters that I have rarely seen before. The characters that I really disliked in the first 20 minutes of the film I found myself having great sympathy for by the end. Such character development is very rare in low budget horror. The gore FX were excellent, and the makeup work was second to none. There's no doubt in my mind that this film will become an instant cult classic, if not already.

Apparently, various crew members have posted comments and reviews on IMDb...that, ONLY, would explain the glowing responses to this really bad hunk-a-junk flick. Horrible acting...terrible script...it's all here.

"Blair Witch" was indeed a one-hit wonder.

This film cribs every scene; there isn't an original idea to be had in the 80 minutes of running time.

It's nice to see "Blair"'s Michael Williams back in action, however.

Not sure why IMDb lists the budget as $8 million - it's obviously incorrect.

Skip this one - watch "Blair" again.

UPDATE: One of the producers contacted me directly, to berate me for this review. That's kinda sad.

'Altered' follows the capture of an extraterrestrial being by a group of men. We learn within the opening minutes that the creature is responsible for their abduction and torture - as well as the death of their friend - several years earlier.

The majority of the movie is contained within the residence of their reluctant friend Wyatt (played beautifully by Adam Kaufman who captures his character's grief and rage at the things done to him) where the group slowly begins to fall apart whilst the extraterrestrial begins to do everything it can to escape...

I hadn't heard of this film before I rented it and was pleasantly surprised to find that, even with a small budget, this was a tense (due to most events taking place in one location) and very well written little movie that kept my attention throughout. The creature effects especially were well done and managed to convey how dangerous and frightening the extraterrestrial was.

I'd recommend this to other horror fans as a shining example of how smaller budget horror movies can sometimes be far more effective than multimillion dollar blockbuster horrors dripping in overcooked CGI and underwritten characters!