FrightFest Halloween review – Alien Country
A pleasant throwback to the kind of smart-on-the-cusp-of-dumb sci-fi creature features Empire Pictures used to make in the VHS days, Boston McConnaughey’s Alien Country – which the director co-wrote with star Renny Grames – opens with a dirt-bike chase through an alien-haunted desert some years before the main story picks up. Guitar-toting Everly (Grames) dreams of leaving the small town of Blue River to be a country and western star, only she’s just found out she’s pregnant by her demolition derby driver mechanic sort-of boyfriend Jimmy (K.C. Clyde) and is still processing her feelings about how this throws a wrench into her plans … this is not the sort of film to grapple with realworld America-in-2024 problems like how to get an abortion in Utah, so her worries are dwarfed by business with a weird item which opens a portal to another planet and lets a few toothy, hungry, persistent aliens through to ravage the Earth. A couple of dimwit redneck lowlifes are after the dingus at the behest of a mystery woman and there’s a handy gun-toting grandma who is up the long history of extra-terrestrial activity in these parts. It has stereotype characters but treats them warmly – Grames and Clyde bicker amusingly and there’s good work from Trey Warner as a jealous deputy and Charan Prabhakar as a dead dog-walker possessed by a good alien – and stretches to above-average effects even if its concept of alien monsters is on the standard side.
Discussion
No comments yet.