After Dark 2007: Unearthed

Unearthed

Oh, won't someone free the horror movie alien from the grip of H.R. Giger? Ever since Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 film, Alien, it seems like all malevolent aliens are slime dripping, mouth articulated, baroque-carapaced xenomorphs.

In this movie, the alien is mixed with a little bit of predator as well, though that aspect of the film isn't strongly fleshed out. More strongly fleshed out is the overwrought plot, concerning hot 'n' sexy Emmanuelle Vaugier as the sheriff of a small town haunted by a terrible mistake in her past as hot 'n' sexy Tonantzin Carmelo does plant biology for Grandpa Russell Means (who's apparently taking a break from delivering anti-pollution PSAs) while hot 'n' sexy blondes Beau Garret and Whitney Able breakdown after picking up hot 'n' sexy hitchhiker Tommy Dewey. Did I mention the hot 'n' sexy drug dealer/pimp Charles Q. Murphy who runs out of gas? No? Consider him mentioned.

Despite being awash in clichés and unlikelihoods, I was actually pretty impressed by this film at first. The cinematography exploited the beauty of the New Mexico setting (even if it was shot in Utah) and you can't really complain about a horror flick putting a hot and sexy chick in a role, no matter how improbable the role.

And, in this case, Vaugier is reprising Ben Affleck's role in Phantoms. Funny thing is that while she's 31, which is a perfectly respectable age for a sheriff, she looks 20, and since she's supposed to have hit the skids, she doesn't really come off sheriff-like. I'd suggest this was a bad combination. It's made worse by the fact that her backstory is just noise, unlike Affleck's character in Phantoms.

And, seriously, why would anyone say, “Yeah, Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms! Let's remake it with hot chicks!”

But they did and it almost works. There's competent groundwork in the filming, editing and music. The story is, as mentioned, derivative and overwrought, but even that's not really the death knell. The thing that kills this movie? The alien itself.

It's a common problem with low-budget monster flicks and I hate to bash them for it but it's truly disastrous. I think at some point they had a puppet-type alien, and where that is used, it's okay, but whenever CGI is used to show the thing moving, it totally destroys the atmosphere. This is compounded by the fact that the creature isn't running around in shadows but is mostly fully lit up.

So, it's diminished by being an Alien rip-off to begin with, and knocked flat by being poorly animated, until all you're left with is a mess of a story that rips off Phantoms, Alien and Predator.

Nonetheless, I was still optimistic going into the next film.