Alien Outbreak

As I sat down in 2021 to watch the 2020 UK sci-fi movie "Alien Outbreak", I must admit that I wasn't really expecting anything overly grand, given the movie's fairly low rating. And truth be told, I am not one that is usually overly keen on the sci-fi genre to begin with.

But I hadn't already seen "Alien Outbreak", so of course I sat down to watch it as I had the opportunity to do so.

And I must say that writer and director Neil Rowe actually managed to come up with a movie that wasn't all that shabby. Yeah, I found "Alien Outbreak" to actually be surprisingly watchable and a fair enough movie.

Sure, this wasn't a stellar sci-fi movie. It does bear witness of being a movie that has that low budget feel to it. But at the same time, then the CGI and special effects team actually managed to do well enough to bring the aliens to life on the screen.

"Alien Outbreak" does, however, suffer from being a rather mundane and slow paced movie. The storyline is just not packing enough punch, and it made for a rather mundane experience in terms of entertainment and pacing. While the movie was watchable, it was hardly an outstanding sci-fi movie, nor was it a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing, as the storyline just doesn't have the contents for that.

The acting in the movie was adequate. It wasn't performances that will leave you bedazzled or knock you back in your seat. People were doing fair enough jobs with their roles and characters, but they were struggling against a flaccid and uneventful storyline.

As for the ending of the movie, well... While writer and director Neil Rowe does leave the ending up for audience interpretation, I can't claim that it was an ending that I was overly much a fan of. It just simply left me with an unanswered question, which made me feel like I had essentially just wasted my entire time sitting through the movie, only to be served an ending such as that.

All in all, then "Alien Outbreak" was watchable, but it just slumped in on itself given its slow pacing and rather uneventful storyline. As such, I am rating Neil Rowe's 2020 movie a mediocre five out of ten stars.

The title tells you everything you need to know.

I quite like a good fake review, shows creativity (lacking in said movie), some attention paid to dialogue (also missing in the movie) and hopefully a way with words that develops the plot and tells, rather than shows how bad the movie is.

Shame the production values of the fake reviews match those of the film. Brand new accounts, with only a single review, are a giveaway that they were extras or gave up a weekend to work on the entire movie for free.

Enjoy. If you can...

...if you believe any of the praise that is here on this page. Poor casting, acting, writing and remedial CGI, but at least there's little of it.

For starters, this is a low budget C-grade (never heard of anyone involved in this film and even most actors don't even have an IMDb profile or photo) UK indie film, so any expectations of seeing a Hollywood quality production are absurd, and so are the undeserving 1's. Reviewers need to cut some slack for new film-makers, and take into consideration their experience and production value.

The directing from camera-work point of view was not bad for amateur (only 2nd full length film and 1 previous short) writer and director Neil Rowe, but he failed in directing his cast, especially Katherine Drake who was either adequate, or falling asleep. The writing was decent for an amateur, and the 84 min runtime would normally be acceptable for this type of film, but I felt with the slow pacing and the many long dragged out scenes, this film should've had either more content, or reduced to a short or 1 hour TV movie. There were also a few plot and technical issues. The dialogue could've also been much better as some of it was just cheesy. The sound was also off with muffled gunfire in some action scenes. On a positive note, what really stood out for me was the score, which was very eerie and fitting - a rare quality in most b-grade films, the visual effects, cinematography and those creepy af robots and aliens - of which were the main reason I kept watching. Even the gore was on point.

This film is not a 10 like the fake reviews, but certainly not worth the 1's. It's an honest and fair 6/10 from me. Click on my username to see any of my 1000+ ratings and 800+ reviews.

Cops arrest a man..."Lets shake the camera a whole bunch", like there's an earthquake. And when the camera isn't "shaking" it's wobbling around like that camera man is drunk. Made me feel seasick. The story and acting isn't that bad, not the best, but not the worst. It just really needed to be directed differently or by someone else.