Battle Invasion

I've seen a LOT worse in the "War of the Worlds" genre than this, but just because there's worse out there doesn't make it good.

The aliens come. Of course their technology is far advanced of ours. We don't know why but we can guess. They hit the whole planet with weapons we can't begin to fight back against. Yet somehow a rag-tag bunch do fight, and even achieve a victory.

Is that this movie? Well actually that's "Independence Day" - but they are much the same overall plot. Just don't expect so much from here. The acting is stiff but tolerable. There are glaring plot holes but then there always are. The special effects were adequate but then these days you can make amazingly good special effects on your home computer if you know how.

If it's a cheap enough rental and you're bored, try it.

Expecting a crappy movie to watch - as mindless background noise - I was happily surprised. Think 'made for Sy-Fy' and you'll know what to expect. The CGI is cheap, but not as bad as expected.

It seemed to me be a cheap knock-off of 'Cloverfield' mixed with 'War of the Worlds'.

I think the big gripe people have with this was the lack of big-battle drama. Instead we have a small group of people just trying to survive. The acting and dialog unfortunately is so real that it's annoying - lots of frantic yelling at each other in confusion and desperation.

Actually, other than the obvious low budget, this was not that bad - give it a chance.

I rate it at least 4.0

For every interpretation of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" — from the radio broadcast and the movies, to the TV series — one could safely rely on consistency: interesting, if not always likable protagonists bearing witness to the near extinction of humanity at the three-fingered hands of aliens motoring around in tripod war machines firing death rays with a distinctive "pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew" sound. In fact, no matter how each version changed with location, hero or narrative device, the ray guns and tripods have been mandatory (often, using the same sound effects Byron Haskin's created for the 1953 movie). And just as consistently, every movie and TV producer since has as least acknowledged H.G. Wells' in a story credit.

That is, until Neil Johnston dropped this steaming pile of dark matter onto our planet. Perhaps that's just as well. Why besmirch a great legacy with this amateurish entry?

In a jumble of styles — which simply HAS to include some found-footage video journalism — the writer/director lifts from a variety of other sources as well. Most obviously, Dawn of the Dead, and the 1984 version of Red Dawn. Perhaps the only redeeming quality is including the word "Dawn" in the title, so the viewer might mistake this as some kind of homage.

You might think that despite the crushing familiarity of the material, you could find a morsel of entertainment. Perhaps you have a fondness for cheaply-rendered 3D and quickly executed After Effects. But if you love clumsy hack writing, this is the movie for you. Betraying even less skill with dialog than he does with with plagiarizing plot, the director creates a world of bickering, unlikeable morons you don't care anything about. And they're often sputtering ill-considered truisms from other films. For example, after one character theorizes that the invading aliens are changing our terrestrial environment to suit their biological needs, a key character solemnly - and unironically - declares, "It's called 'Terraforming.'" Indeed. And Alien Dawn isn't the product of film-making, but rather "movie-forming."

Up till now, the accepted gold standard for the worst film ever made has been Plan Nine from Outer Space, directed by the incomparable Ed Wood.

But I'm here to tell you all that Neil Johnson has surpassed Mr. Wood with his Sci-Fi epic, Alien Dawn.

I've never posted anything on IMDb before, but I felt that the magnitude of the awfulness of this film had to be addressed.

Oh, and the reviewers who gave it 4 and 5 stars?

Really? Seriously?

One guy even said, "I've seen a LOT worse in the 'War of the Worlds' genre than this."

Please! Be serious! Some people rely on this site for guidance when renting movies. I downloaded the thing off the net for free and I STILL feel robbed.

I have seen a lot of questionable movies throughout my 37 years, and "Alien Dawn" is definitely among the top of the pile of questionable movies.

"Alien Dawn" shamelessly steals from movie such as "War of the Worlds" and "Skyline" without even trying to cover it up. The alien invaders tripods and how they pick up people for processing. It was painful to watch.

The effects in the movie were laughable and not pleasant on the eyes. The explosions were hilariously fake and bad. And the CGI effects were dubious and questionable, most of the time looking quite fake. However, I will say that in defense of the movie, that there were times that the tripod beings looked nice enough. The sounds of the alien weapons sounded like something I remember a toy gun I had when I was a kid used to make, it was bad. And apparently alien weapons is just randomly flashing an array of colors on the screen. It made absolutely no sense.

As for the acting, well I have seen worse, but it wasn't really anywhere near being interesting. There was a lot of acting fully devoid of emotion and enthusiasm. And that made the movie quite difficult to suffer through, as if the bad effects and sounds weren't doing their part to bring it down.

The story? Well just think of "War of the Worlds" mixed with "Skyline", and you basically have the plot of "Alien Dawn". If you have seen either of those two movies, you essentially have seen "Alien Dawn" as well. And it was just so ridiculous that the small band of 'survivors' could bring down tripods with homemade bombs, when military air planes couldn't do the same job.

If you enjoy Sci-Fi movies, then there are far better movies available than "Alien Dawn". However, if you like super campy and cheesy Sci-Fi movies, then you will probably get a kick out of "Alien Dawn".

This movie will definitely test your talent for managing to stay focused for about an hour and twenty minutes.