Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Extraterrestrial Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 12, 2015

Someone’s trying to phone home (or at least the police) all right, but it’s not an adorable little alien, as Extraterrestrial offers the requisite pre-credits tease involving a hapless and apparently lone female. In a largely abandoned stretch of a rural two lane highway a woman bursts out of the forest looking disheveled and distraught. A general store and gas station are still ostensibly open, at least as judged by its buzzing and flickering neon sign, but when the woman tries to get inside, she finds the door locked and the worker inside not especially welcoming, apparently oblivious to how needy the frantic woman is. How retro is this little backwater? Well, there’s a phone booth next to the establishment, which is where the panicked woman runs to next. She’s in the middle of a frantic 911 call when that old science fiction bugaboo—the flashing light from above—intrudes, and then suddenly both the woman and the phone booth are nowhere to be seen. The aging hippie store worker ventures outside to see what the fuss is all about, which is when the phone booth at least comes crashing back down to earth. It’s a wonderfully frenetic and slightly funny opening to what turns out to be a pretty tired trek (star or otherwise) down familiar roads that include both a cabin in the woods and alien interlopers. However, for anyone who’s ever wondered exactly how aliens accomplish those famous anal probes (and you know who you are), stay tuned—Extraterrestrial may offer some interest that’s up your particular alley (so to speak).

Sheriff Murphy (Gil Bellows) shows up at the scene of the “crime” (whatever it may have been) the next day, interviewing the somewhat addled clerk (Michael Kovac), who admits years of hallucinogen use hasn’t prepared him for what he saw the previous night. It’s hinted that the good Sheriff may have more than a passing interest in whatever led to the destruction of the phone booth along with the remains of belongings to the now missing female, but that plot point is held for development a bit later down the line.

In the meantime, we’re introduced to April (Brittany Allen), a young woman who’s attempting to navigate some new family territory as her parents apparently proceed toward a divorce. April is going to pay a visit to the family’s cabin in the woods (cue scary music) to pick up a few items that belong to her father, as her father is convinced her mother is going to discard things if she gets the chance. April’s boyfriend Kyle (Freddie Stroma) is excited to tag along, though he seems to have a bit of a subtextual reason for wanting to come. That ulterior motive is somewhat at odds with the fact that Kyle ends up “surprising” April by inviting a gaggle of other friends to accompany the pair on what they assume will be a quick jaunt to the forest. Yeah, right.

Kyle’s a bit of a hot rodder it turns out, something that brings the teens into contact with the actually fairly understanding Sheriff Murphy as the kids get into the region where the “phone booth incident” recently took place. Once the group gets to the cabin, a couple of interstitial plot points play out (including Kyle’s “real” reason for wanting to come along), until a mysterious fireball in the sky propels the film into its real reason for existing, namely a showdown between earthlings and those nasty little gray men. When the kids investigate what caused the fireworks display, they come across what appears to be a crashed alien spaceship, which in turn leads them to their first encounter of an up close and probably too personal kind. In a perhaps surprising if temporary development, the kids come out on top of that particular interchange.

However, that brief victory actually provides grist for the mill for a “new, improved” incursion of aliens out to either wreak havoc or at least anally probe an earthling or two (the screenplay by the Vicious Brothers kind of hedges its bets). In the meantime, the kids get to a haven of sorts in the backwoods grow operation of a guy named Travis (Michael Ironside) whom they’ve already run into and who has a history with one of them. Travis drops a bit of a clue that the Vicious Brothers use for a kind of silly “sting” at the tail end of the film.

Extraterrestrial isn’t wholly successful, but it works in dribs and drabs and it has a somewhat unusual structure, one that includes bright, open aired sequences for a surprisingly long period at the film’s outset. The mashup of a kind of proto-slasher ambience with what turns out to be an alien abduction scenario is perhaps more interesting on paper than it is on film, but the last section of Extraterrestrial has some goofy (if patently disturbing) imagery and a kind of winking subtext that delivers a bit of black humor that some of the rest of the film lacks. Performances are generally quite strong throughout the enterprise, with Bellows especially appealing as Sheriff Murphy. Some of the acolytes of April and Kyle are pretty much “red shirts” from the get go, and therefore perhaps unavoidably unable to really develop any real characters, but Allen and Stroma have some good moments in the film, even if the climax ends up playing like a weird fever dream ported over from Bonnie and Clyde.

Extraterrestrial Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Extraterrestrial is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot digitally with the Red Epic (at least most of the time—more about that in a moment), Extraterrestrial looks commendably sharp and well detailed throughout the bulk of its opening act, when the kids are tooling about in the woods in bright, sunlit environments. Colors are bold and accurate looking, as well as vividly saturated. Detail and fine detail are exemplary virtually every step of the way. There's a decided downturn once things get to the darker second half of the film, a downturn that is exacerbated by a kind of "found footage" approach with the kids using a minicam or other things like cell phone video to capture various moments. These have either been sourced from actual lo-fi elements or post-processed to look that way, for a lot of these are overrun with pixellation issues, noise, macroblocking, banding and general fuzziness (see screenshot 12). Even the native HD imagery tends to lack much in the way of shadow detail in some of the darkest scenes, and fine detail is somewhat obliterated by the use of heavy red and/or blue filters during some of the abduction sequences (the underside of the alien craft glows red and then blue at key moments, bathing scenes in those colors).

Extraterrestrial Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Extraterrestrial's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 provides near constant immersion, especially in the second half of the film once the alien angle gets exploited more fully. Ambient environmental sounds are near constant in the woods and are well placed throughout the surrounds, developing a sense of aural claustrophobia at times. Good bursts of LFE provoke the expected startle responses, but a somewhat busy mix can occasionally bury dialogue in the noisiest moments. That said, the vast majority of spoken moments come through cleanly and clearly with no problems whatsoever. Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range extremely wide on this problem free track.

Extraterrestrial Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 7:17)


• The Making of Extraterrestrial (1080p; 7:44) is a standard issue EPK with some OK interviews with The Vicious Brothers.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:59)


• Commentary with Cast and Crew features Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz, Brittany Allen and Melanie Papalia.

Extraterrestrial Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Extraterrestrial could have used some of The Cabin in the Woods' pitch black humor, or at least something closer to that film's approach. There are stabs at a darker comedic subtext here, but they never really take hold, and instead the film is content to maraud through a series of horror (and science fiction) film clichés, never delivering much in the way of surprise or, ultimately, interest. Performances are good and the film is technically quite accomplished. The Vicious Brothers are obviously talented filmmakers, but they might want to reach out to other screenplay writers the next time. Technical merits are generally very good to excellent for those considering a purchase.