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The Alien Report
USA 2020
produced by Patrick Donnelly, Kevin Schroeder
directed by Patrick Donnelly
starring Braxton Hale, Emily Bramer, Koltyn Watts, Tamara Fair, Aldo Reyes, Gary Simon, Robert Isaac, Marissa Benni, Deshawn Davis, Olivia Sieck, Kelly Kirkwood, Kelly Cunningham, Ryan Cunning, Olivia Sieck, Whitney Masters, Phoebi Yu, Seth Harman, Elvis Thao, Rob Goeppner, Steven Nakamura, Jason Pate (voice), Tadas Bendziunas, Diego Diaz, Emiliano Diaz, Miguel Salsade, Benjamin Donlow, Drashidat Shittu, Claudine Tambuatco, Kyra Jones, Tyjuan Malone, Daniel Watson
written by Patrick Donnelly, special makeup effects by Catherine Woods, J. Anthony Kosar, Anna Cali, visual effects by Dan Walden
review by Mike Haberfelner
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A young man (Braxton Hale) claims to have been abducted and
experimented on by aliens for all his life, and even now they are
monitoring him out of cars with tinted windows strategically placed on
street corners that always take off when our hero approaches them, and
when he follows them on his bicycle, they just disappear into thin air.
Now of course nobody would believe such a story, so the young man, a bit
of a tech wiz, equips himself with hidden cameras, one even in his hearing
implant, to collect proof - and collecting proof he does, including
footage about other humans being experimented on, an alien-human hybrid
(Emily Bramer) who seems to be sympathetic to his cause, and a
Frankenstein-like abomination (Tadas Bendziunas) on the verge of spinning
out of control. But if he thought having actual footage would somehow
change his life for the better, it only increases his paranoia, to the
point where he only feels safe in public places trying to avoid sleeping -
but the aliens have long been onto him, and they have their ways to deal
with him ... Now by and large, I'm not a fan of found footage
movies - but this one is different, because despite its loads of
obligatory shaky camera footage and actually rather elaborate special
effects, this is basically a character piece of a man falling deeper and
deeper into a rabbit hole created by paranoia and conspiracy theories -
and since the movie is seen from the protagonist's point of view, it can
also be interpreted as his fever dream (and as such actually shows
parallels to the sci-fi classic Slaughterhouse-Five),
with his physical decline only mirroring his mental spinning out of
control. But what makes this movie fall together quite as beautifully is,
besides Braxton Hale's unnerving performance, that it doesn't cut
aesthetic corners like way too many other found footage films, but puts an
emphasis on atmosphere and tonal coherence, all resulting in a rather
captivating watch.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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