Although it would be a stretch to call it original, Altered doesn't feel as derivative or as terribly schematic as so many similar features do. Bearing some occasional resemblance to Night of the Living Dead, with a touch of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, and maybe a set up similar to John Carpenter's Vampires, director Edwardo Sanchez (who delivered the almost unforgettable Blair Witch Project) crafts a sufficiently effective creature feature, which may be silly, but doesn't feature a dull moment.
For seven years Cody, Duke, Otis and Wyatt have been hunting a mysterious race of Alien hominids which dwell in the shadows outside civilization. On the night that they capture a live one for the first time. They bring it home unconscious, but soon realize that they have made a big mistake. First of all, if they kill this creature, his buddies may declare war on humanity. If they don't kill it, the thing could escape and either brainwash or kill our heroes (the only ones who are even aware of the alien's existence)
Altered grabs your attention from scene one, and it maintains stability, but the climax isn't quite as solid as the rest of the film. The manner in which the last twenty minutes play out are the result of one coincidence or contrived moment following another. Of course it could have been worse. Sometimes these movie fall to pieces when trying to bring the stories to a conclusion. Some films don't even have a conclusion at all. (I won't give any names) I will say this for the climactic finale, The make-up job is sensation as we get to see the creature show us the full works, and the scene ends with a sensational wide shot of a spacecraft unlike anything I've seen since maybe Star Wars.
Altered concludes on a note which hints that there could be a sequel. One may doubt that something as small as this will see a follow-up movie, but lets not forget that even Uwe Boll's movies like Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark (which most critics put on the worst films of the decade list) have somehow managed to get funding for even worse sequels. The point being, is that the idea of and Altered 2, doesn't sound so dumb, and considering that the film is surprisingly enjoyable, it might be interesting.
