Alien Lockdown (2004)

It's been a while since I watched a really trashy, really stupid indie movie to be honest, I think the last one being Polar Storm which, whilst not incredibly life changing, was not terrible if I'm being honest with myself. But I have a busy life at the moment and have been dealing with work and relocating the past few weeks so haven't had much time for anything 'me' related. But I oddly have a quiet few days and movie time is very much back on the schedule. So this week, it's all about the crappy, low budget, indie sci-fi movies that I secretly love. And I've chosen Alien Lockdown, from 2004, literally just because it has alien in the name. That's it.

After the opening sequence introduces the Morningstar - an extra-terrestrial stone delivered to Earth from an asteroid impact thousands of years before modern civilization - and it's journey from ancient times to it's rediscovery in present day, we are taken to the Glacier Research Facility where some very scientific looking people in big suits are examining what appears to be an alien species, biologically superior to humans in practically every way, when, without warning it suddenly springs to life and slaughters nearly everyone in the room before escaping whilst one of the scientists mutters "I did it..." presumably having some involvement in the creatures revival and escape. Said Scientist is later identified to be Dr. Alan Woodman (John Savage) and the shadowy organisation responsible for all this nonsense dispatches one Commander Rita Talon (Michelle Goh) to travel to the facility and ensure the entire mess is quietly swept under the carpet. After arriving on the scene with her x2 teams of heavily armed soldiers, Talon and the others make their way into the facility and after searching around discover Dr. Woodman and his colleague Charlie Dryfus (James Marshall), barricaded in a room higher up. Charlie reveals that Woodman set the alien free because he "wanted to see it feed." and explains that he helped programme the facility and is "useful." mainly to avoid getting a bullet in his brain. But before they can chat any further the team are interrupted when Talon's Beta Team of soldiers comes under attack from the alien. Talon and a few of the others split away, taking Charlie with them, but the whole team is slaughtered before they can be recovered with only Team Leader Myers (Nathan Perez) surviving. Back in their safe zone, Myers demands that Talon and them pull out but Talon reveals that it's a lockdown with no returning ride out of there dispatched to arrive for at least another 12 hours, whilst Dr. Woodman sits in the corner preaching about it being a morality tale or something. But as Dr. Woodman does his best worst impression of a Mad Scientist, they quickly have to scramble when the alien finds a way into the room and in doing so, the team fragments with two of the soldiers being picked off and Dr. Woodman breaking away from the others. Whilst confining themselves in a freezer to stay alive, Charlie reveals to Talon that the 'alien' is actually more of a creature, being an amalgamation of 1000's of different species and having some of Woodman's DNA encoded into it and that there are potentially millions more in production in the lower decks of the facility (!). Meanwhile as two of the soldiers search for Woodman, the movie reveals to us that one of them; Lieutenant Green (T.M. Van Ostrand) has been personally tasked with recovering 'the stone' from the facility, eluded to be the Morningstar from the beginning intro. When he accidentally reveals he has classified info to his soldier colleague he shoots him dead before continuing on alone. Meanwhile deciding to go and look for their missing colleagues, Talon, Myers and another soldier who has survived to this part of the movie begin to move around the facility lead by Charlie to search for a way to escape. Charlie leads them to room chock full of tiny alien babies and explains that Woodman engineered the creatures using data extracted from the Morningstar stone and shows that he's been holding onto it ever since the team got there. Just in time for Lt. Green to walk around the corner pointing a gun at everyone. There is a bit of a tense standoff as Green demands they hand over the stone but just as it looks like things are about to get nasty, Green is clobbered from behind by Woodman, with the creature in tow who drags Green's corpse away. When the obviously expendable remaining soldier calls Woodman a "crazy son of a bitch." Woodman pops a cap in his chest, also breaking the glass behind the others and releasing the millions of babies kept behind them in captivity. As all hell breaks loose, Talon and Myers try to escape whilst fighting off the creature with Charlie escaping as he's pursued by hundreds of tiny alien babies. Myers is injured and doesn't make it with Talon having to euthanise him. Talon and Charlie reconvene and together the pair make the decision to effectively go rogue, intending to kill the creature and stop Woodman from releasing it into the wild. Charlie tracks down Woodman who appears to have some kind of detonator, presumably one that blows the whole facility sky high if necessary. Woodman hands the detonator over to Charlie quite easily, claiming the experiment is over and that they are all going to die anyway. Charlie picks it up before shooting Woodman in the leg as he walks away leaving him at the mercy of the tiny alien babies as they drop into the room from a vent shaft above. Talon meanwhile leads the creature into a massive air turbine shaft and after luring it into a 1-on-1 fist flight, she kills it by plunging a knife into the soft tissue around it's neck cavity. Making her escape she discovers Charlie waiting for her, who operating a lift, takes them both to the surface to escape where waiting for them is the bellend behind this whole thing in the first place: Colonel Anslow (Martin Kove) he asks Charlie to hand over the stone, but Charlie instead pulls a gun on him and after trapping him behind in the facility, Anslow is overcome by tiny alien babies as Talon and Charlie fly off into the sunrise, nuking the facility with the detonator as they do.

Ooof this was a bit of a rough one but if I'm being honest, not terrible. I mean there wasn't a lot of thinking you had to do in order to keep up with it, but it at least was engaging enough that it kept me interested. It did recycle quite a lot of source material from the much more famous Alien franchise as well as from other similar creature break out sci-fi horror movies, but to be truthful it was mostly enjoyable enough to watch. It was just kept very basic, very formulaic, and very similar to the movies that it was trying to copycat.

I think first and foremost though, my biggest complaint is that it was very dark. And I don't mean that in the metaphorical sense, I mean it was a very dark movie. I don't know if that was intended to be a stylistic effect or just that it helped hide the lower budget investment in some of the scene dressing and costume design, but yeah a very dark movie and I'm glad I watched it in the evening otherwise would have been difficult to see what was actually going on half the time.

And then secondly the acting here got a bit ropey at times, and alot ropey in other times. John Savage was given quite a fair bit of screen time as the facilities Mad Doctor and when he wasn't saying anything and just skulking around the facility he looked un-nerving and sinister, but when he had to deliver dialogue and when he got all preachy about divine intervention and stuff, that illusion was quickly shattered and he looked a bit out of his depth. Almost being a comic parody of the role he was supposed to play. 

Aside from that the rest of the cast were mostly quite bland and vanilla and Michelle Goh as Talon wasn't really granted much character depth beyond being the movies 'badass super-soldier killer' lead role and came across as quite rigid and wooden as a result. She is given one moment, when Myers dies, to show a little bit of emotion but doesn't really have any definable character beyond that really and I think she could have been used better.

The storyline also is kept fairly bare bones. There's been a disaster at a secret facility and these guys are sent in to deal with it. All hell breaks loose. That pretty much covers it and it's been done before in other movies with little twists on the hows and the whys e.t.c but it's a fairly formulaic approach to these kind of sci-fi movies. This movie didn't really bring anything to the table that hadn't been done before now, and whilst it was enjoyable and interesting enough in of itself, it wasn't really pushing any boundaries so far as storyline and plot are concerned. It all made sense though and it told a story from start to finish with a little bit of a twist baked in with the whole Green being a double agent thing, but there wasn't anything massively fresh and groundbreaking here that you couldn't really get from watching anything else.

And then there is the eponymous alien, or creature if you like, who looked distinctly like the xenomorph from the aforementioned Alien franchise crossbred with Predator from the Predator franchise. You don't really get a clear good view of it apart from some scenes near the end, but it moves around the facility like a gorilla which, to be honest, kind of kills the illusion a little bit? It looking a lot like the xenomorph also doesn't really do anything for this movies standalone credibility... but for the most part though it at least looked real and genuine enough that it didn't come across as a silly joke. It's clear that effort was put in to at least make it look like a credible alien / creature thing.

And despite the whole movie looking dark and underlit for most of the run time, the set design too also looked pretty decent, with the facility actually looking like a proper facility and not some random, tiny, movie set somewhere. For a low budget movie it was pretty commendable as that's often one of the parts that budget has to skimp on, but it looked pretty good here and genuinely felt like it was some isolated, secret government facility building in the middle of nowhere.

In terms of production, the movie showed it's budget a little bit here. The cinematography was mostly just fine, there was a few odd moments with some quick camera angle changes and blurring into a bit of a confused mess to kind of conceal when something dramatic was going on, usually when the alien was attacking somebody, but I feel like they made up for it with some interesting scene framing and angles in other places. There was a few good moments where a scene was framed and produced really nicely, especially with the low lighting. The accompanying soundtrack was very basic though and at times a bit ill fitting. Some of the instruments made the scene sound like it was a bit comical and a bit of a joke which is not what I think was really supposed to be the intended outcome, and it really showed that it was only a TV production in that regard.

So yeah this was one got a bit rough in places and certainly clearly laid out where the investment had been put in and definitely not put in. And although very formulaic and very imitating of more well known, famous movies. Generally, it was ok and I at least was able to watch it from start to finish mostly invested in what was happening and wanting to see how it developed. I can't safely say that I'd want to watch it again, but it didn't feel like a chore having to endure it, so it at least had that going for it, but I don't think it really broke any new ground for me, or introduced me to something I hadn't seen before now. It was fine, just really fine and nothing much else really beyond that. 2 out of 5.