Altered -Movie Review

Directed by Eduardo Sanchez/2006/1hr 27min
SPOILERS AHEAD
Originally published November 25, 2013.

Reading the Netflix synopsis of this movie, I was expecting an extraterrestrial sci-fi thriller rooted in revenge and justice.  I was not expecting a backwoods, beer-fueled, mulleted, old-fashioned ass kickin!

Our film begins with three, dare I say, "rednecks" barreling through the woods in a van chasing after an alien.  Otis, Duke, and Cody, armed with harpoons, guns, chains, and traps pursue the alien until finally it falls in a deep hole and they are able to capture it.  This opening scene also contained my favorite dialogue exchange of the whole movie: "Hey moron, you almost harpooned me."  "Suck it up, piss-pants."

I digress.  They load up the alien and bring it back to the home of Wyatt, a paranoid young man with a picture of a presumed dead relative and a claw-like "tracker" in a jar out in his garage.  Otis, Duke, and Cody bring the knocked-out alien into the garage and lay it on the table.  Wyatt checks to make sure the alien is still alive because apparently if you kill one, the rest will come and annihilate you.  Cody is a bit of an antagonist, giving Wyatt a hard time and revealing that the aliens had attacked before, killing Cody's brother, Timmy.  Upon their escape, Wyatt told all their family members and friends that the men were lying about the alien attack and that Cody had killed his own brother.  Cody's dad believed this story and the shame of the lie has been haunting Cody for 15 years.

Suddenly the alien wakes up, lets out a high frequency screech, leaving Wyatt grabbing his head in anguish.  Wyatt snaps and starts cutting the alien's midsection open.  The alien's arms get free and it starts to thrash as Cody jumps in and restrains it, getting bit in the process.  Wyatt is able to extract the tracker from the alien's intestines and steps on it, ensuring the other aliens will not be able to find them.  It is then revealed that Wyatt has a giant torso scar from when he was abducted many years ago and implanted with a tracker himself.


The alien is passed out again, so they glue it back together and duct tape it to the table - so rednecky - I love it!  Wyatt's wife/girlfriend, Hope, comes into the garage and starts freaking out, as anyone would upon seeing this laying on their table.  Otis had put a welder's helmet over the alien's face so they could all avoid eye contact, but in the tussle, the glass part of the helmet had cracked, and Hope and the alien engage in a stare-off.  Entranced, she grabs an exacto knife, turns it on the men, and then puts it to her own throat.  Cody tackles her, Wyatt screams, "LET GO" and the trance is broken.  They tie Hope to the bed to keep her out of the way while Cody realizes that his entire body is becoming infected from the alien bite.  His skin is turning grey and veiny and splotchy and overall gross.

The creature wakes up again and we go through the process again of knocking it out, this time with a shovel, I believe, and we see Cody's condition worsening.  This is what they believe killed Timmy, the contagious bites, eating from the inside out, their flesh peeling off in layers.  Yum!  They lock his ass in the bathroom because he's starting to trip out.  Out of nowhere, the creature is GONE FROM THE TABLE!  Those long fingernails it had came in handy for cutting the duct tape.  The lights magically go out as well and here comes the town sheriff to investigate after a disturbance call.  The sheriff pops a Yuengling as the alien is revealed hiding in a closet and then scrambling behind Hope's bed.  We get our first clear view of the alien at this moment, black, slimy, pointed teeth, wet black eyes, and what my husband thought was a vagina on its forehead.  Anyway.

The alien and Otis tussle, but the alien gets the better of him, stringing his intestines across the room and starting to chow down.  The other men barge in trying to help, somehow the sheriff gets shot, and Wyatt is able to saw off the alien's hand and fling it across the room.  The sheriff dies, thereby being the most useless character of the whole movie.  Thanks, officer.  Hope frees herself from the bed and threatens to kill the alien.  Instead they load it into the van to take it to "town."  Duke stays behind with Cody and Wyatt explains to Hope about how he was altered many years ago by the aliens and now they want him back.

Wyatt screeches to a halt in the road, sensing the aliens are surrounding them.  Hope walks off and Wyatt discovers, surprise, the sheriff's body is in the cage, not the alien!  Duke had done the old switcheroo and is back in the garage torturing the alien.  Duke's about to set it on fire when Cody's rotting ass crawls out of the bathroom, distracting him.  Upon Wyatt's arrival back home, we see Duke nailed up in the utility closet and implanted.  Wyatt finds the alien in the bathtub, fights it, gets bit and then tackled as the alien flies across the room.  BUT! Duke is still alive, though not for long, as he yells for the alien to "Get off him, you f*cker" but then has his throat ripped out.  Sigh, anyway.

Eventually Cody harpoons the alien across the room into the wall and they have an epic staredown.  The alien mind controls Cody making him beat Wyatt's ass even though all his bones are breaking and his flesh is rotting off and finally Hope busts back in and shoots the alien in the head.  Wyatt puts Cody out of his misery, shooting him in the head, but then ALL the aliens start to break in.  It's pandemonium!!  Wyatt and Hope run to the basement in a little bunker Wyatt has created and they blow the whole freakin' house up.  We see an exterior shot of the UFO lingering over the house and then escaping up into the atmosphere.  Oh yeah, the UFO looks like a giant damn frog.  Disappointed.  Wyatt and Hope are alive and although they blew up their entire house, somehow the body of the original alien is still within a couple feet.  Our final scene ends with them leaving the charred alien body on the doorstep of a man named "Towne" (this was never really explained) and they drive off in their van.

Alright, so this movie was utterly ridiculous, perhaps only remotely scary due to Cody's flesh rotting off, but overall hilariously entertaining, whether intentional or not.  My husband even sat down halfway through to watch it and didn't leave til the end, even though he has Assassins Creed 4 to play downstairs, so that's got to tell you something.  Anyway, on sheer terror factor alone, I have to give it a thumbs down, but being from Virginia and having spent my fair share of time around guys just like those in this movie, it almost reminds you of home in an odd...way...

Anyway, if you have an hour and a half to kill and a beer or two to drink, I'd definitely suggest watching this movie with a group of friends.  It's got just enough suspense to keep you interested and enough humor that you'll be quoting for the next few days.  Thumbs up from me!

-Amanda

P2 - Movie Review

P2 (2007)
Directed by Franck Khalfoun
-Spoilers ahead-

Our film begins with a sweeping view of Level P2 of a parking garage, as "Santa Baby" creepily drones on in the background, and we see a handcuffed woman bust out of the trunk of a car screaming.  Wait, what?!

As we rewind back to earlier in the evening, we see aforementioned handcuffed woman is Angela, a Type A overworked businesswoman working late on Christmas eve.  A man named Jim comes into her office and apologizes for getting drunk and making a move on her.  This seemed odd and out of place at the beginning of the film but I'm only mentioning it because it factors in later in the movie in my favorite scene.

 

Angela finally gets ready to leave to see her family but finds her car won't start.  She goes into the security office where we meet Thomas (Wes Bentley of American Beauty fame), the bumbling, awkward, yet slightly condescending security guard who tries to jump her battery and then invites her to have a Christmas meal with him.  Angela is noticeably off-put by Thomas and goes upstairs to call a cab and take a nap.  Once her cab arrives, Angela finds she is locked in the building and cannot get out.  As she struggles to unlock the door, she watches her cab drive away when all of a sudden all the lights in the building go out.  Angela begins to walk around in the dark and gets chloroformed by Thomas.

 

Here's where it all starts to get weird.  Angela wakes up ankle-chained to a table in the security office, wearing a white dress, and sitting at a table with a Christmas meal on it as Thomas begins to grill her on questions about her personal life while wearing a Santa costume.  (Lol what?!)  Santa then decides to give her a gift of a VHS tape of the security footage of Jim drunkenly groping her in the company elevator.  Thomas unlocks Angela so they can take a romantic walk together and she stabs him in the shoulder with a fork as his Rottweiler guard dog barks maniacally in the background.  Angela doesn't get far though before being tackled and shoved into a car by Thomas and thus we get to my favorite part of the movie because I'm a sick freak.

We see Jim tied up in a chair in the parking garage as Thomas instructs Angela to go beat him with a flashlight to prove that she's not a slut (Lol what?!) Thomas keeps repeating that he's here to help Angela, not hurt her, further cementing that he's a full-blown creepy stalker psycho.  He gets out of the car and beats Jim's face in with the flashlight.  But oh no, he's not done yet, he gets back in the car and pushes Jim's rolly chair through the parking garage with his bumper and then smashes him into the concrete wall.  We see Jim's intestines pouring out as Thomas backs the car up and hits him again, smashing his head to smithereens.

 

Angela is rightfully freaked the F out and she manages to escape the car and the rest of the movie is essentially a cat and mouse chase scene through the many different levels of the parking garage.  We see Angela trap herself in an elevator, which Thomas then floods from above with the emergency fire hose, almost drowning Angela.  We see Thomas dance to Blue Christmas and shake his hips like Elvis in the security office for no apparent reason.  We see Angela manage to frantically call 911 and as the cops arrive, Thomas tazes her and hides her body in her car trunk before putting on a show of innocence for the cops.

 

Our movie culminates with Angela trying to chase the cops as they drive away and then getting herself chased by Rocky the Rottweiler.  Angela turns into a super badass and kills Rocky with a tire iron.  This scene is pretty nasty and I hate when animals die in movies but it was Angela or Rocky, so Rocky had to go.  This of course pisses Thomas off to the ultimate level and they end up having a game of chicken with two cars on level P2 of the parking garage.  Thomas swerves at the last minute and Angela ends up flipping her car by taking the curves too fast.  Thomas approaches her car thinking she's dead, but nope, she stabs him in the eye with what looks like a nail file and then chokes him with her handcuffs.  In one final outburst of psychoticness, Thomas screams after Angela, "Why can't we be friends?  Why can't we just spend Christmas together?" and then lets out a stream of expletives which should never be used against women including the B word and the C word.  Okay Thomas, you gots to go.  Angela tazes a trail of gasoline leading up to the car and sets Thomas on fire.  You go, girl.

So as you can probably tell by the description, I wouldn't classify this film so much as a creepy scary horror film but more of an unsettling tension-filled thriller, which I always enjoy.  I might be in the minority for this, but I love movies that take place in only one setting with very few characters, as P2 did.  Exam and Pontypool are other great movies with minimal characters and setting changes.  I feel these "one-setting" movies are a true test of acting skills to see how well the main characters can carry a story and keep the viewer interested without tons of set changes, special effects, and secondary characters.  Rachel Nichols and Wes Bentley do a great job in P2.  She is convincing as a strong badass woman who doesn't give up and he is convincing as a super psycho who didn't get enough attention growing up.

The character of Angela was a compelling one, as she didn't necessarily have any violent tendencies or superhuman strength.  She was just a regular businesswoman caught in a terrifying situation and did the best she could to escape with what she was given to work with.  She fought Thomas to the end, ran her heart out in a skimpy white dress, and wasn't afraid to get covered in dog blood.  P2 didn't have a plethora of special effects or a supernatural element.  There was no mystery or twist ending.  There were no real jump scares.  BUT what it did have was a great build of tension in essentially an hour long chase scene and it had blood and gore.  And it had a guy's head explode.  Two thumbs up!

-Amanda