Altered

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Most straight to DVD horror movies you can skip as soon as you see the killer nun-clown on the front cover, but ALTERED I had to give a chance due to some discussion on the website: Zoetrope.com. You are about to step into a review, don’t worry I’ll make this quick for both of us, and if you get too scared of being bored feel free to bail out and learn to formulate your own critical opinions. ALTERED is directed by Eduardo Sanchez, or as the biggest promotional line for the film states: “One of the men who brought you THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.” ALTERED is about a group of men who were abducted by aliens 15 years previous and now having captured one weigh the consequences of exacting their revenge. The film opens with a pretty shot. Then the poor acting talent bumbles out of a van. I won’t waste your time by naming names because chances are you won’t know any of them and besides you can always IMDB those things if curiosity is overwhelming. However I will point out that horror movies like this are never complete without adding Lance Henricksen and Lance was nowhere to be found. Instead there is a cameo by James Gammon, another name you’ll probably fail to recognize, but with a voice and face you’d never forget. Oh come on casting director: Gammon is no Henricksen! The premise for this movie is an extremely intelligent and creative one. A “what if those sissies from FIRE IN THE SKY fought back” sort of scenario. This story idea deserves much better than this straight to DVD format and treatment. I mentioned the poor acting that occurs early on, however as the film pushes forward the actors begin to fit their roles a lot better and they did not come across so cheesy. One major issue though in dealing with the “treatment” of the film and the acting is the dialog. Sure there are people who cannot use any language other than profanity, but in this movie all of the curse words actually held back the momentum. The characters weren’t saying anything I really cared about and instead of filling me in on the great story background more or truly taking me in-depth with these characters I got a bunch of arguing and profanity. It is scary when someone who is as big a fan of profanity as I am even points out its usage as annoying in a situation. The alien’s skin is a color of green that made him look silly for some reason. True one could just come out and say: “The alien looked silly.”, but I think if he had been some other color of green maybe he would have been more frightening. Was the alien chuckling a few times? Yeah, cut out the chuckles. The characters Otis and Cody end up having some interesting looking things happen to them though, maybe if I don’t tell you you’ll have a reason to watch it because I’m not really going to give you too many. A large portion of the film takes place in a garage that is square and not so vast a room. However, when the alien busts free from his bindings (don’t complain that this is a spoiler, of course the alien is going to bust free from his bindings) how the heck did they lose track of where he went? The searching of the garage was equally silly. If I were in charge of marketing this film, aside from superimposing Lance Henricksen over all of the characters, I would have toned down the cussing and replaced it with interesting dialog. Then I would have aimed to get this bad boy not only on DVD but on the sci-fi channel. The gore within the film would be easy to edit down for tv, but I shudder to think of what grand dubbing would have to be done elsewhere. Now that I am finished with all the full of myself complaints and critiquing let me drop a bottom line, or final thought if you prefer to call it. ALTERED is a way smart, low budget idea that was turned into a fairly lame film with potential. The potential that I speak of is that of the writer and creator of this movie Jaime Nash and how this film isn’t totally bad to have your name attached too and hopefully will open up the doors for some other genius ideas. Now the real bottom line: ALTERED feels like a sci-fi channel flick that got a bit out of hand, runs a bit slow though it is short, gets better as it goes along, but really in the end I think E.T. kicks its butt.