Alien Domicile

I feel like Red box owes me an apology for tricking me into telling my fiance that this movie looked good.

I started watching this movie when my iPad battery was at 29%. I completed the whole movie when my battery at 22%. Easy to guess plot, no engaging scenes, with good background score. Casting could have been better. Overall, it's a below average flick. Fast forwa4d to watch it quickly.

The movie had some good elements, like the camera work, and the acting was ok. My rub is that nothing was explained, and some of the type casting was not done. For Instance, the military guy is supposed to be an Air Force Special Forces Master Sergeant: um, NO. To make Msgt rank you need to be gung ho, especially at that rank. This guy looked like he'd fit in more in a starbucks ordering a latte, wearing his beach shirt and crocs. He did not come across as a trained killer, and it showed in the fight scenes, as well as the poor tactics and gear: definitely not believable. No one seems to wonder where they are, or why. Plot twists just drop, with no explanation or backstory. Basically, I didn't care about anyone, or what happened to them. They did stupid things, and got stupid results. I'm 2/3 thru this movie, after stopping multiple times to get some kind of explanation of what's going on from Google. That should have been the director and story writer's job! I saw potential here but it just never developed. I was left with more questions, and not in a good way. Overall, I give it a 3; could have been a decent movie, but failed miserably.

Dull poorly acted. I ended up fast forwarding just to see if it ever got interesting. It didn't. Feels like a student film project.

Even if it was any good I would down rate it for the misleading cover art.

I watched The Making of Alien Domicile before watching the actual movie. As an Indie Film maker myself, I like to see what other's come up with no matter how bad the reviews are. This one has some terrible reviews.

Surprisingly, this movie has many very good elements going for it; The cinematography at times is as good as it gets. The camera work, lighting, and composition at time does truly stand out. Very good work.

The acting is, for the most part, believable. Considering what the cast was given to work with, I think they all gave very good performances.

The musical score is on par with most indie films. Nothing special here but good enough to not be bad.

The sound seemed good enough. Nothing stood out as being bad,, and that's a good thing.

Now, here is where the movie fails. It's a typical story that is played out over and over again in the world of indie film making. It seems to almost always happen that there is one guy on in the production who thinks he has skill and talent to do certain critical jobs just because he is probably the guy who put up the money. It's the guy who thinks he wrote a compelling story simply because he wrote it and will be paying to make the film. It's the guy who edits a movie just because he thinks he can without ever considering that editing is more than just stringing the shots together. ,,, and it's the guy who thinks he has the ability to direct a movie set while telling a story and giving reason to the actors only because, again, he is the one paying to make the movie... In the case of Alien Domicile, that person is Kelley Schwartz. He ruined his own film by thinking he had the talent to handle most of critical creative elements himself. My complements to him for putting together a talented cast and crew. They did not let the production down. It's just too bad that he did. In my opinion, his lack of skill and talent let them all down. As a said, it's the very common story of one man's ego getting in the way of what could otherwise have been a movie worth watching and, for the cast and crew, a movie worth being a part of..... I could see what he was trying to do... It's just too bad he didn't have the chop to pull it off.

I want to also mention the special make up effects. In my opinion, the alien in the movie is well designed and constructed. I was impressed when I first saw the actor wearing the suit in the behind the scenes documentary. Nicely done. It's just too bad that the director didn't know how to shoot a man in a rubber suit. He exposed too much of it and he chose bad camera angles. In the end, it ended up looking like a guy in a rubber monster suit.. If he would have allowed the DP to do his job and if he had a good editor (instead of himself) then the alien would have been something memorable.

I recommend this movie to other indie film makers only as a case study. To the average audience member, sorry, but you probably won't like this one.