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.