TIFF Report: Evil Aliens Review

UFO enthusiasts rejoice and tremble! West s here with news: those lights in the sky and rumors of abductions? They’re real! All of them! But these aliens aren’t friendly, not by a long shot. They’re evil, so Evil that it needs to be capitalized, and here intent of probing your nether regions in uncomfortable ways, impregnating your women and slaughtering your cattle.

A young Welsh woman and her boyfriend have met for a late night tryst on a remote and isolated island off the coast. Afraid that her brutish brothers will find her with a mainlander she leaves to return home before being discovered, leaving her boyfriend alone in the field ... with the sounds of her screams. The pair come to in an alien craft. Both are naked and strapped to tables. The man ravaged by a bladed, rotated alien probe and the woman impregnated and returned to earth. When word of the supposed abduction and rapidly progressing pregnancy reaches the staff of Weird Worlde, a strictly low grade sexed up paranormal news show, they send their crack team to investigate. Well, crack may be overstating it ... you’ve got your skin flashing host, coked up camera and sound men, a pair of actors for the reenactments, and the geeky UFO enthusiast, along as a ‘special expert’. They aliens are real, carnage ensues and the blood begins to flow. So much blood, in fact, that the production actually ran out after only three days shooting and had to order more, so much more that they eventually lost count.

West is not only aware of how silly this film is, he revels in it. It is sly, self referential and smart enough to embed a fistful of references to other films - Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead, Braindead, Night of the Living Dead ... basically just about everything with the word ‘dead’ in the title - in there that will have genre fans giggling whilse also executing them so well that those who miss the references won’t care - they’ll be loving it, too. And, references aside, West has an undeniable flair for this sort of thing creating some brilliant, purely original material of his own. Watch for the cross and mark my words when I say that you’ll never see heavy farm equipment in the same light again ...

West knows the quirks and cliches of the horror genre as well as anyone and he has created a cast of characters with an uncanny knack of saying exactly what you’re thinking, not to dip into irony a la Scream, but to revel in all the goofy stuff that makes the genre great. As he said himself introducing the film, “There are a lot of serious films in this festival. This isn’t one of them.&” Not serious at all, but fantastic fun. Evil Aliens will apparently be getting a limited theatrical release through the US in early 2006 witha DVD to follow. Do not miss it.