Alpha

ALPHA is an action short by writer/director Ryan Monolopolous, of whose previous work I was not familiar with but after seeing this, I immediately want to get acquainted with, as here he not only shows great talent in telling a story that has been done before with so much style and confidence behind it you feel like you're watching something wholly original, and it's those skills that are required for making old into gold. With some exceptional martial arts talents in front of and behind the camera with energetic and clear camera-work by Jeremy Cournyea and Liam Day depicting the combat choreographed by writer/director Ryan Monolopolous and Jake Guinn , who respectively star in the film as Subjects Echo and Beta as well as Josh Flaugher who stars as Subject Delta, the team ensures they've got enough going for martial arts enthusiasts as they do for Sci-fi fans, but it is the combination of both that truly elevates this material to the level of John Hyams' recent Universal Soldier flicks.

ALPHA plays out in a coherent and engrossing non-linear fashion, as the film details the works of a mad scientist played wonderfully devilishly but also relatably humanly by David Scissons, who leads the Genesis project that is basically a free-for-all death match between the 3 subjects, the goal of whom are to find a briefcase that I'm not going to reveal contains what. The story is well told and the frequent cut-backs to the lab experiments done on the subjects and the fight sequences breaking out in a desolate, abandoned former lab are very well told and edited together, as they show both the pain the subjects endured to become what they are and the newly found strength each of them came to possess. The narrative and the black and white color palette, gives the film a dark and dreary tone without being too edgy for its own good or too pretentious for no one's good.

The fight sequences are brilliantly choreographed but the choreography too never reaches the point of excess, it is varied and punchy but never unrealistic and never outstays its welcome, when the subjects should go down, they go down, and the subjects themselves are so radically different in behavior and personality it directly impacts their style of fighting with Jake Guinn as Subject Beta having an erratic personality and a tendency for fast, nimble maneuvers, his fight with Ryan Monolopolous as Subject Echo is the standout of the film, while the fight with Josh Flaugher, the heavy brute Delta feels appropriately slower but more powerful as he can deliver devastating blows and would probably be able to turn most human heads into easily squashable watermelons.

ALPHA is a tremendously exciting and riveting piece of work that should be shown to as many film fests as possible where fantastic martial arts prowess meet equally charming and engrossing storytelling techniques to create a compelling and easily reliable world for future sequels, spin-offs or who knows, maybe even a TV show.