Extraterrestrial

Another gang of obnoxious American teenagers, another secluded cabin in the deep, dark woods, another lurking supernatural presence. This scaring-by-numbers horror flick faces an uphill battle to convince us of its right to exist. It’s a battle that ‘Extraterrestrial’ unexpectedly wins, but only in the final three minutes – and getting there isn’t really worth the effort. Brittany Allen plays April, whose trip to her mum’s secluded arboreal bolthole turns nasty when a UFO crashes nearby.

April and her party-hard pals are as interchangeable as they are unbearable, but when the lead actress is introduced with a leering close-up of her scantily clad backside, it’s safe to say that character development was never a top priority for writer-directors The Vicious Brothers. Their direction is functional but moderately effective: the photography is crisp and there are one or two decent shocks.

But ‘Extraterrestrial’ doesn’t amount to much beyond a mish-mash of movies we’ve seen before. Until that aforementioned coda, which combines sudden violence, a gorgeous extended tracking shot and probably the weirdest use of a gushy Magnetic Fields love song imaginable. If only the entire movie had been as playful and bizarre.