Terminal Invasion

With the "near-great" Brucie, how can ya miss. Ok maybe he doesn't crack wise enough (Big Way my fave from another dud Navy spoof) but the scene near beginning in the men's room -- oh yes. Especially the religious slant. Gotta love it. Had this had an Aliens 2 style budget it would have kicked people better. But for FREE on Sci-Fi channel, what's to barf. Couple nifty twists offer a pleasant little ride. Grade: Gentleman's C. (C for Campbell)

In a stormy night, while transporting the criminal Jack (Bruce Campbell) to the death corridor, the officers have a car accident nearby a private airport. They bring the prisoner to the place where clients are arguing the owner of the charter services and pilot Cathy Garrett (Chase Masterson) because she refuses to take off with the bad weather and the communications are down due to the snow storm. Jack asks to go to the toilet being escorted by the guards; however, in the bathroom, a preacher attacks and kills the guards and when Jack kills him, his body vanishes. Jack returns to the lobby and when the security guard holds him, he accidentally shots a passenger, but the woman does not die until Jack shots her head and her body also disappears. The survivors conclude that they are trapped in a place with aliens and nobody is trustful.

"Terminal Invasion" has a good concept, where the viewer shall guess who are the aliens among humans, but there are many flaws in the story. But considering the extremely low-budget of this movie, with few locations, special effects and unknown cast (with the exception of Bruce Campbell), the result is an entertaining B-movie. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Ataque Alienígena" ("Alien Attack")

Ok this movie will never win an award, it will never have a sequel and it will never be a cult classic, but it was a pretty good trapped with monsters formula movie. The basic plot involves aliens who are disguised as humans who are here for some reason you really won't care about, at an airport that has been caught in a blizzard. Enter Bruce "If Chins Could Kill" Campbell as our anti-hero, a convict who's trip up has been sidetracked by a cup of coffee. We quickly get down and dirty with aliens killing people and people killing aliens and people who don't trust people having to rely on those they don't trust when the people they did trust try to kill them. Got that? Good. If you follow that you'll have no trouble here. The action is fairly fast, except when it's not and I suggest that if you and your buddies haven't seen it, have a betting pool on who's what and who lives, it's not always who you think. My scores on a 1-10 scale: Action = 7, Acting = 7, Plot = 5, Tension = 7, Surprises = 7, Fun Factor = 7.

Bruce Campbell stars as Jack, a convict who is being transported during a blizzard, unfortunately the car crashes and the police and him must hike to a nearby private airport that is shut down because of the blizzard and has a handful of angry customers who want to get out of there. Things go awry when people start disappearing and who is blamed? Of course Jack is, he is a convicted murder after all, but was it him?

The movie is basically borrows most of its originality from John Carpenter's the Thing but it really doesn't do that bad of a job of it. One redeeming quality of the movie was that the director, who directed the original Friday the 13th by the way, doesn't show the "creature" very much, which a lot of directors of todays big-budget horror movies could really learn something from.

Overall, this movie is a lot better then most of Sci-Fi's premiere movies and nearly all made-for-tv movies. Fans of Bruce Campbell should really enjoy this movie, as some of his humor of previous appearances play through in his character in this one.

Overall : 7/10

Mostly predictable with a few surprises. Not a bad film, but not a great film. Acting was ok, aliens looked fairly real, would have looked better on a big screen. The way the aliens died looked a lot like they did on that TV show about the alien invasion called First Wave. Good surprise ending. But still a B type movie, but quite watchable.