Director: Joseph Khan
Year: 2025
Country: USA/United Arab Emirates
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
After returning to his hometown, a down-on-his-luck teacher trying to connect with his high school sweetheart is dismayed when an alien fungus arrives in town that no one seems to really care about, forcing him to find out what’s going on around him while everyone lives their lives.
Review:
This was a decent enough if entirely problematic genre effort. Among the better elements here is the rather strong and likable setup that allows this one to poke fun at the spate of incidents around modern society. The fact that so much of this is reliant on the idea that the creatures are present in society as an invasive part of the planet, but no one seems to have much notice of them, nor care about their existence, until they start to massacre the town, offers a great pointed commentary on the nature of modern society invading other aspects of normal life. In their own minds, until it becomes time to deal with something, only to learn it’s too late to do something by that point, this is mixed together incredibly well with the rest of the story involving the other characters coming together to refine their legacy. Part of the fun here involves the redemption of this character to the implications of the plant continuing to spread across the world.
While this makes for the best part of the film, there’s also a lot to like and dislike when it comes to the creatures themselves. As a concept, the creatures are incredibly well-handled, with the implication being a sentient form of plant-like creature that spreads across the town and the world itself, looking to assimilate humanity into itself while creating enough implications in their lives that people soon grow so used to it that they’re able to continue on with their lives despite it killing others. This leads to some genuinely funny moments as the creatures are involved in a series of impressive attacks and encounters that are more spectacular than expected, resulting in some fun, high-energy attacks. Despite all that, the effects needed to pull them off are incredibly wonky with appropriately cheesy CGI that matches the wild tone very well, only to be quite obvious about the limitations when they appear.
As well, there’s also the incredibly frustrating and lacking plot that manages to offer up the kind of brain-numbing storyline that makes no sense whatsoever. The whole idea of the film presenting the plants as taking over the town and requiring multiple days to accomplish its mission sets it up to be a real threat, but then it brings up their actual weak spot later on as an allergic reaction to light that would’ve been supplied by Sun long before the fateful day comes so everything feels incredibly confusing how long a period that this takes place over. Since this makes mention of this one being around so long that they’ve gotten used to the presence of it being around them and are completely nonchalant about being around it, even after a full-on massacre against the student body, this is quite troubling to play along with, as everything requires such a leap of logic to make it work. As well as some rather odd tonal shifts here involving some weird comedy choices, these all manage to hold this down.
Overview: ***/5
An enjoyable if somewhat flawed genre effort, there’s enough to like here to help hold this one up over a series of minor flaws that are just crippling enough to hold this back. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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