Director: Alice Maio Mackay
Year: 2026
Country: Australia
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Trying to move on in life, a teen living with her grandparents while trying to get over the death of her parents is conflicted when they encounter a special extraterrestrial visitor looking to take over the planet, where she must decide if life is worth living to stop its plan and save her friends.
Review:
Overall, this was a serviceable if somewhat troubling genre effort. Among the film’s positive points is the idea of this one being so heavily influenced and emboldened by the sense of nostalgia that it becomes a fine running commentary on the topic. With the quick amount of work done here to showcase just what kind of life she has in front of her as she prepares to graduate from high school, spends her life hanging out with a group of film-buff geeks more enamored with preserving the past than anything else, and the pressures of having to move on without her grandparents who helped inspire so much of who she is, this makes an immediate case about how much disdain for the current state of the world she has. It creates an intriguing lead where her inability to connect with her friends moving on without her and the constant need to hold onto a past that won’t always be there sets up so much of what’s going on here as she quickly becomes so disillusioned that it creates a wholly intriguing problem once the creature arrives and starts knocking off her friends.
That becomes especially meaningful once the series of interactions with the alien creature start to become more prominent and more vicious. The first encounters here, looking solely at the creature going around town and meeting up with random strangers, are fun enough, but once the big attack in the video store occurs, where it shows mimicking and imitating others to either get them disoriented or draw them closer, it provides this with an intriguing main villain. Knowing that this is all done at the point of looking to learn more about humanity and undergo the kind of training necessary to understand us better so that it can be a better hunter, this allows for a solid slew of sequences where they have to fight against the gloopy, translucent alien being that is at the center of the film, as this gives it the kind of unnatural alien presence and style that works quite well here. Coupled with some fantastic moments where they try to rationally and logically work out what the creature is and how to fight it off, which is quite fun to work out the kind of intelligent being it really is, these all give this one some worthwhile features.
There are some issues here that keep this one down. The main issue here is that, for all the good this does at trying to work through the intriguing concept of an apathetic teenager trying to find her way in life, very little of this ends up generating an interesting enough story. The sense of complacency and quiet disgust for the life that she lives, trying to battle against the nostalgia she feels for her past, is tested when the alien arrives, and the fact that it takes a genuine encounter with it to convince her otherwise is a bit too late to make anything of what’s happened so far is a bit hard to take her completely in here. As well, there’s also the incredibly lame and underwhelming fact that the finale never really makes out as enjoyable as it could’ve been by being just a simplistic confrontation that’s just over before anything happens, being enough here to bring this down overall.
Overview: **.5/5
A fun enough, if problematic, genre effort, there’s some worthwhile elements to like here that are rather fun and manage to keep this one going against a slight series of flaws that keep it down. Those with an interest in this kind of genre effort, who don’t mind the issues here, or who are hardcore fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, as most others out there should heed caution.
This review ran as part of our coverage of the 2026 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival. Click here to follow the rest of our articles about the festivities!
Comments
Post a Comment