Most alien invasion movies are a mixture of elements from other alien invasion movies, hopefully with enough new angles and fresh ideas to give them a jolt of originality.
INVASION PLANET EARTH (2019) is a good example--it's a little "War of the Worlds", a little "Independence Day", a bit of "When Worlds Collide", some "2001: A Space Odyssey", and a big dash of brand new stuff to make it worth plunging into.
Thomas Dunn (Simon Haycock, WASP) and his wife Mandy (Lucy Drive, ZOMBIE MASSACRE 2: REICH OF THE DEAD) are pregnant again after losing their first daughter at an early age, but before this ray of sunshine can pierce the veil of their somber existence, the world is invaded by thousands of alien gunships swarming out of an orbiting mothership while Thomas, Mandy, and certain other humans begin having terrifying visions of a nuclear apocalypse.
The mystery of just what these aliens are up to spices up all the familiar plot elements, with the alien ships zapping people and transporting them into oblong containers with windows through which they can helplessly observe countless others being similarly abducted.
Strangely, all the troubled mental patients in the facility where Thomas works are coming out of the experience seemingly cured of their mental and emotional maladies, after having some really weird, personalized mental delusions. (One of them imagines a full-scale zombie invasion.)
Then, an interesting sort of wormhole/stargate effect whisks them into a land of who-knows-where in which Tom's childhood desire to save the world like his sci-fi hero "Kaleidoscope Man" prompts him to engage in some pleasingly heroic exploits.
Meanwhile, Mandy's stuck back on Earth as her grade school class breaks up due to impending world destruction (the alien invasion comes just as the nations of the Earth are on the brink of nuclear war) and she's forced to flee for her life while wondering where the heck her husband is at the moment.
Through her eyes we see cities destroyed, masses of people in blind panic being either abducted or vaporized by nuclear blasts, and other horrors. It's here, amidst some stunningly-rendered cityscapes, that the film's apocalyptic imagery is at its most intense and affecting.
With all of these exciting science-fiction elements in play, it's too bad director and co-writer Simon Cox (DRIVEN) is working with a much lower budget than any of the previously mentioned sci-fi classics.
This means that while the effects we see during most of the film's running time serve to adequately convey the more mindblowing elements of the story, they rarely rise to the level of the more opulent sci-fi blockbusters.
Still, the sheer amount of colorful, frenetic, and sometimes dazzling effects compensates for their lack of Hollywood production gloss.
At any rate, once INVASION PLANET EARTH gets fired up it plunges forward like a blue streak and carries us along with it through some wildly imaginative territory to a pleasingly unexpected ending. Low-budget ambience aside, it's got the most important features of absorbing sci-fi, which are imagination and a deeply-felt sense of wonder.
EXTRAS INCLUDE:
The Making of Invasion Planet Earth
Deleted Scenes
Director Commentary Track with writer/director Simon Cox
Trailer
PROGRAM INFORMATION
VOD: Available on Cable and Leading Digital Providers (Amazon, iTunes, Fandango Now, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, etc)
DVD: Available at Walmart, Amazon and local retailers
Directed By: Simon Cox
Written By: Simon Cox, Simon Bovey
Produced by: Simon Cox
Starring: Simon Haycock, Lucy Drive, Toyah Willcox, Sophie Anderson, Julie Hoult, Danny Steele and Ian Brooker
Composer: Benjamin Symons
D.O.P: Gordon Hickie
Production Company: AlphaStar Productions
Distribution: 4Digital Media
Run Time: 92 Minutes 49 Sec
Rating: NR
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 (2.35:1)
Audio: 2.1 Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital
Language: English
Official website
