Alien Raiders (2008)

When a heavily armed group of people lay siege to a rural grocery store they are there for more than just the money.  While at first it seems like a robbery it quickly becomes apparent that they are looking for something in the hostages they take.  One by one as they are either cleared or shot on site there seems to be some sort of logic behind the madness.  But when an off duty cop shoots the “spotter” things go to hell.  See they aren’t there to rob the place, but are actually looking for humans infected by an alien parasite, including the last remaining king that is necessary for them to reproduce.  If they can locate and kill the king then the others become harmless.  But how can they do their job without their spotter who could id the infected and surrounded by the police outside the store? 

This is a fine example of independent filmmaking.  The story is solid and moves along briskly, which makes for an entertaining hour and a half.  I really dig the decision to set it in a contained location like a grocery story.  This not only gives the movie a cool claustrophobic feel, but also it manages to keep the scale of the story down and within the budget of an independent movie.  I’ve seen far too many independent movies kill themselves with good intentions by trying to shoot a movie that is way beyond the budget.  The movie gives just enough background to fill in the blanks without bogging down what is really just a killer creature feature.  Though I never thought to set a creature feature in supermarket!  Toss in a kind of predictable twist ending that was still fun and you have the makings for a good time.  Which is exactly what I had watching Alien Raiders.

Of course the biggest concern for me when reviewing a creature feature like this is what the creature or creatures are going to look like.  Without being obvious about it the movie does a great job of not showing too much of the creatures until the very end.  This is probably a good thing because they look a bit cheesy and silly.  Now don’t get me wrong as a coinsure of creature feature this appeals to me, but it might of hurt the overall tension that the movie does a good job building.  What they do here is keep the creature, which is animating it’s host body, moving and in the shadows.  We hear the creature way more often than we see it.  To do something like this effectively is way harder than it looks and Alien Raiders does it really well.  In addition to the creature there are some gory kills, a few gunshot wounds, a body here and there, and the snip test (freaked me out).  All of it appears to be practical, and if there is any CGI it is well hidden.  Awesome job guys.

This isn’t a perfect movie but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best creature features that I’ve seen in quite a while.  Normally this is the kind of movie that is banished to the land of bad Sci-fi channel CGI crap fest.  It is so nice to see one done right!  For more information on where you can get this check out their website at http://www.rawfeed.com/alien_raiders/

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer