Gemini Rising

Wow, ALIEN RISING is a bad movie, and then some. It's a cheap and cheerful B-movie in which the central characters remain locked in a laboratory for most of the running time. The story involves a gifted young woman who has some kind of psychic powers who finds herself abducted by the military for a special job. Her role? To communicate with a captured alien and discover the plans it has for mankind...

Despite there being the requisite twists and turns in the tale, ALIEN RISING is really too cheap to go anywhere. The only - and I mean the ONLY - thing this film has going for it is a central role for cult favourite Lance Henriksen, but - and no offence, Lance - he's looking tired and generally disinterested by the whole thing.

The story unwisely focuses on an annoying female character for the most part and her attempts at emoting are quite pitiful. Not as pitiful, though, as the aliens, which are among the worst-animated CGI you'll ever see. I always seem to be saying that in my reviews but it truly is woeful here, and I'm genuinely surprised that this was a recent film. Elsewhere, the director constantly makes idiotic decisions, like adding classical music to various fight scenes. The result is ridiculous in the extreme.

I didn't know they were still allowed to make such movies in 2015!! I mean, if you do get to take a look at it, around 20-30 minutes is all that is needed to realize that this is as cheap as they come.

And you know what? I'll stop blaming the budget. Cameron had a different idea for Terminator 1, he wanted to make it like T2, but budget and special effects would not allow him such a thing back then. Wes wanted to make Freddy like the one in the New Nightmare, again, restrained by budget and CGI he chose differently. Results? Work of arts!

Therefore, Alien Rising is just bad. I graded it a 3 stars and not 2, because the plot, the origin, had a nice idea that could have been developed into something better. But it was a roller coaster of clichés. Stay away from this one, it really is 3 on a scale of 10.

Always a pleasure seeing Henriksen on the screen, I think he could do a lot better tho. One of my favorite actors sinking more and more.

Cheers!

There are some movies that defy most of the rules of proper film making, not because of the intriguing talent of their makers, but because of their sheer incompetence.

This is one of them. I took it as an. Opportunity to switch off 95 percent of my brain for the sheer purpose of total relaxation.

That worked very well as a preparation for a good sleep.

Towards the end, the movie gets so trashy that I even had a few laughs, though I am not into trash movies. As a bonus, I got to watch Lance Henriksen, whom I like very much, in one of his typical roles where he has not much to do but being Lance Henriksen and maybe have some fun on the set.

I give two stars, one for Lance, and one for the bold move not to destroy all copies before release.

And then there's the Hollywood required pictures of Barry Obama in the background of any scene in a government office.

I quit watching.

This is more of a sad question - what did she say right at the end (the poor diction pretty well sums up the film). It started as something along the lines of wondering "if we're alone" and finished completely inaudible!!!

That said (or mumbled.) there was a perfectly good sf plot line in there and Ericcson is always good value but quality was low and the focus was erratic. We saw much of the heroine's martial arts skills but no character development for anybody (who was that scientist and whose corpse was he fondling?).

Once again I wonder how films of this stamp ever recoup their production costs - anybody know?