Evil Aliens
(2005)
review by Don't Feed the Dead

Old school Peter Jackson fanatics rejoice! It has been too long a time since a film the caliber of "Braindead" aka "Dead Alive" has graced the horror genre. Many have tried to re-invent Jackson's witty splatter-fest approach, but all have ultimately failed. After viewing the abysmal Aussie zombie flick "Undead", I felt that the "Bad Taste" and "Dead Alive" DVDs would be the only entries in the personal archive that could make me gag on my own vomit from laughing so hard. However, Jake West steps up to the plate and blasts one out of the park with Evil Aliens, a splatter comedy that mimics Jackson's style with greater finesse and flair than those who tried before him.

The story revolves around a tabloid television show bent on getting factual accounts of UFO encounters throughout the countryside of England and Wales. Well, the opening of Evil Aliens provides one of these encounters which gives a new (and seriously explicit) definition to the term "anal probe". I'm admitting here and now, the first 10 minutes of this flick had me hooked and nearly as impressed as Jackson's lawnmower scene from Dead Alive.

Anyways, after getting the lead they were looking for, the telly station sends out crack reporter Michelle Fox (Booth) to assemble a team of filmmakers and UFO specialists to visit the poor girl that survived the abduction in the backwoods of Wales. After a series of ridiculous character intros, the group hops into a Eurowagon and heads off to the strangest setting I have seen since Miike's Gozu. Is farm life in Wales really like this?

Arriving at the farmhouse, the group encounters some ghastly sites as the inhabitants of the place decorate in a fairly odd and savage manner. Poking around the vicinity, Fox and co. decide that there's noone home, so they make themselves cozy and set up shop for the abduction reinactment. Cue the three strangest Welsh farmers EVER. The three older brothers of the abducted girl blaze into the house like they're straight out of "the Crazies", decked in full Tyvek suits and respirators. Their visitors are scared shitless until the abducted girl shows up to calm the brothers down. She talks the
brothers into letting the British tabloid folk continue their story and
actually gets them to escort the group to the site of the abduction. It's around this time that Jake West's Evil Aliens really flies off the deep end and makes the viewing experience one you won't forget!

Whether it be wet dreams from a trekkie soliiting "services" from a
femalien, the showdown between the farm brothers and the aliens or the impregnation sequences of a couple of females, Evil Aliens will keep the audience wide eyed and thoroughly amused. By far, this is the craziest flick that I've seen in a long time that actually left me satisfied and wanting more from the director. Believe me, I've seen some crazy shit of late (Salo, Calvaire: the Ordeal, August Underground) but none of these films even come close to the experience I had watching West's gore-fest.

Comedy and splatter aside, the film is made extraordinarily well. West utilizes the dank and desolate setting to his advantage, creating scenes with the Aliens at moonlight similar to the silhoutte chase seens of Texas Chainsaw Massacre lore. The solitude of the country setting also proves to be a key element in the plot, as there's only one way on and off the farm, and it comes and goes with the tides. One would also be hard pressed to find
a finer example of SFX from an overseas production as the gut-busting birth scenes are extremely explicit and clorful.

I firmly believe that Evil Aliens will be welcomed into open arms in the large scale market and will easily draw comparisons to Peter Jackson's earlier works. In fact, some might actually say that West's film is a tad better (sin) than "Bad Taste" or "BrainDead". Hopefully, West won't sell his soul to Hollywood anytime soon and continue to fill the DVD shelves with films that entertain. I'd hate to see another great director get wasted on remakes.