Extraterrestrial (2014 film)

Plot

A panicked woman runs to a shop wanting to use the phone. After being denied entry, she enters a nearby phone booth, and is taken by a flash of light.

April and her boyfriend Kyle are going to her parents' cabin for the weekend. However, Kyle has invited his friends Seth, Melanie, and Seth's girlfriend Lex. Along the way, Seth sets off fireworks in the car and they are pulled over by Sheriff Murphy, who gives them a warning. They make it to the cabin, and begin drinking and smoking marijuana bought from April's nearby family friend, Travis. Kyle proposes to April, which she rejects, angering him. Later they see something crash in the woods, and upon investigating find that it is an alien spacecraft, with footprints leading away from the crash site suggesting that one of the occupants is still alive.

Returning to the cabin, the group encounters and shoots one of the aliens. Driving to the nearest town for help, they are cut off by a fallen tree. Suddenly, a spacecraft appears overhead and abducts Lex, as the rest flee to Travis's house. As April explains what has happened, Travis gives his theory that the aliens and the US government have had a treaty since the Roswell incident; the aliens abduct people while the government is left to clean up the mess. There is only one rule: no human must engage them. Since April has shot one of them, it is considered a breach of the treaty, and now the aliens are hunting for them. The kids run back to the cabin and board up the windows, while Travis stays behind to fight, only to get either abducted or killed.

After mistaking the officers for aliens, Seth is arrested. It is revealed that Sheriff Murphy's wife disappeared and he believes aliens took her. As Murphy and Deputy Mitchell argue about Murphy's wife, an alien appears in front of the car, and uses telepathy to have Murphy shoot himself and Deputy Mitchell. Before the aliens can get Seth, he is saved by April and they return to the cabin. Seth, in a disturbed and panicked state, abandons the group. Running through the forest, he encounters an alien and is abducted. As the aliens begin attacking the cabin, Kyle locks April and Melanie in the basement so that they will not get abducted. Kyle hides in the bathroom with a knife, hoping to ambush the aliens. When he walks past a mirror, an alien jumps out and abducts him.

April and Melanie sit in the basement and recall the summer when April's parents took them fishing. Melanie, unwilling to be abducted, commits suicide by sleeping pill overdose. April, armed with a crowbar, prepares to face the aliens but she finds that they are leaving. Realizing that they have taken Kyle, she signals to the departing alien spacecraft by setting off one of Seth's fireworks. She is then abducted, and wakes up in an alien environment. Wandering down the dark hallways, she sets out to find Kyle.

Elsewhere, Seth is seen strapped to an upright operating table. He is subjected to a bizarre medical examination, involving being covered in a black substance, having a small robot pierce his navel and having a triangle-shaped marking branded onto his abdomen. Undergoing an anal-probing procedure, Seth dies. April, still searching, finds the contained bodies of several other men and women, one of which is an apparent half-alien hybrid. Among them she locates the unconscious Kyle and revives him. They embrace as the aliens confront them, returning them to Earth.

Kyle and April awaken in a field. Walking through the woods, the pair encounter soldiers at the UFO crash site removing the debris. As they run towards them they are suddenly shot. As they lie wounded, April gives Kyle the engagement ring, which he puts on her finger. They are then executed. A military officer confirms with his superior that there are no other surviving witnesses. Dumping the bodies in a pit and incinerating them, the military continue the cleanup operation, confirming Travis's suspicions that the U.S. Government is hiding the existence of extraterrestrials.

Cast

Reception

Critical reception for Extraterrestrial has been predominantly negative and IndieWire rated it at "C-" and commented that it was "an example of how not to make a horror film". Fangoria and Bloody Disgusting both expressed disappointment over the film, as both felt that Extraterrestrial utilized too many familiar tropes and cliches of sci-fi horror movies. In contrast, Den of Geek gave the film a mostly positive review and commented that the movie had "clever visuals to occasionally distract from its mediocrity." While Jack Bottomley of starburst (magazine) also wrote a more positive, if slightly mixed, review saying, "Extraterrestrial is an untaxing albeit regularly clichéd watch, but still a fun dose of sci-fi horror, even if the search for a truly great modern alien horror goes on".

Release

The movie had its world premiere on April 18, 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival under the banner of IFC Midnight. On 12 May 2014 The Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray and DVD.