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 bought this movie because of the trailer. The simple fact is the trailer isolated all the good bits and sold a much better product than Alien Rising actually is. The story fails for critical reasons. There is an obsession with fighting ability, an obsession that has no bearing on the story at all. All this fighting is designed to show us that the heroine is the best at fighting with all the men (aside from this star there are only one or two unimportant other women). I'll be honest. This aspect was so juvenile that I only got half way into the picture before I stopped watching. There is a lot of cgi, which is used for wide shots of the facility, spaceships, helicopters, and the aliens, and even, I suspect, for the sea. It was only ever OK quality. This is a 2013 movie, a good decade after good cgi became available. The sets were unimpressive, as was the script. I'm prepared to give Alien Rising 4 stars because the story had begun to have some sci-fi originality before I stopped watching, and that's important to me as I love any expansion of good sci-fi writing. But that originality was also riddled with tensions around the heroine, whom in the matter of a couple of minutes rejects a former lover and starts a new love affair with another man. It's all bits and pieces, and in the end it was obvious that the set up was to confirm who survived and whom got killed in the second half of the movie, when, I venture, the alien escapes. One day I'll go back and see if I nailed it. This is yet another sci-fi movie that has not had sufficient overview before, during or after production, and we the public have had to suffer another dud.

I very rarely put reviews of films but I felt I had to for this film to save anyone else form watching it. It's CGI heavy when it didn't have to be, like when a character is shot multiple times it's done with CGI when plain old special effects would have done a better job. The CGI reminded me of an early 90's game cut scene CGI. The acting is half baked, felt like it was just a pay check job. The choreography was completely terrible and made me feel embarrassed watching it. The main characters almost constant narration was unbearable. The score was poorly chosen and at one point one track finished and a different track started immediately started with a new scene. Felt very poorly edited as a whole. If I had a one use time machine or a mind wipe to revive this abomination from my life.

Well, I'll start out by being charitable. The plot had some potential. The acting wasn't as horrendous as some I've seen, and the filming wasn't bad. However l, having a 120 lb female Rambo-ette taking out all the trained soldiers was....well, it was just embarassing to watch. I suppose in some deluded Feminazi mind it must have made sense, but it completely stripped away any realism this movie MIGHT have had. And yes, I am a woman.

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?