Starring Rebecca Kush, Steve Deighan, Amelia Randolph Campbell, Jeffrey Plunkett, Ivory Aquino

Directed by Andrew Bellware

Alien Uprising is probably the best Aliens fan film I've ever seen. Admittedly, I haven't seen any Aliens fan films, but if I did I doubt many would do a better job of recreating the aesthetics of that film quite like Alien Uprising. Of course, do bear in mind, Alien Uprising is not an Aliens fan film. Alien Uprising is a new science fiction horror film that just happens to mimic aspects of Aliens to such a degree it becomes amazing to know the film was not produced by The Asylum as a straight-up Aliens mockbuster.

Space marines - check
Alien monster - check
Monster secretes an acidic liquid - check
Numerous close-up shots of the monster's mouth wide open and dripping slime - check
Planetary colony that has ceased communication - check
Planetary colony owned by a corporation - check
Deep space travel hybernation - check
Drop ship scene - check
Motion sensors - check
Planet has a nuclear reactor set to explode - check
Corporate weasel along on the mission doublecrosses them - check
Female heroine - check
Finale has the female heroine go it alone into the monster's lair to rescue another female - check

I really could go on about the similarities in terms of plot and just way the certain scenes are framed. Heck, they even get some Alien 3 in there by having the colony in question be a prison colony and having one of the prisoners assist the lead heroine in her monster fighting.

Now not everything is exactly the same. At the end when the female heroine goes it alone into the monster's lair to rescue another female it dragged off; instead of it being a little girl, the female in question is a fellow soldier who just happens to be the lead heroine's lesbian lover. See. Not everything is the same.

Surprisingly, the most obvious component of Alien that every knock-off mimics, the alien chestbursting scene, is nowhere to be found here; though the film does come awfully close.

Nor is the monster an actual alien. That corporation has been using some of the inmates as guinea pigs. The monster is one of the inmates deformed into a nearly indestructible cannibalistic mutant. It's a guy in a jumpsuit with monstrous hands and a head that is vaguely reminiscent of an Alien creature. Actually, the head kind of reminded me a bit more of the creature from the 1981 made-for-TV movie The Intruder Within, which also just happened to be a blatant Alien knock-off in its own right.

As easy as it would be to totally dismiss Alien Uprising as just another Aliens wannabe, director Andrew Bellware successfully creates and maintains a grim tone that few rip-offs of the Alien franchise have ever pulled off. Along with a script that occassionally shows signs of literacy amid the cascade of patchwork Aliens riffs, he and the cast succeed in creating a serious mood piece out of this obvious homage/rip-off/mishmash that almost makes the movie work on its own terms. Almost.

The monster is only shown sparingly. That means there's an awful lot of time to devote to characters standing around talking about their situation. That leaves plenty of room for skulking about hallways with guns and flashlights. The film also ends on a sour note. The final confrontation between the heroine and monster is over so fast it's impossible not to be left shaking your head. Then things drag on for about another ten minutes just culminate with what amounts to a punchline, both lame and somewhat predictable, that feels out of place with the morose tone the film had worked so hard to maintain prior.

The biggest knock against Alien Uprising, the knock it cannot fully overcome, remains how difficult it is to get fully sucked in by a movie when you can predict darn near everything that's going to happen next because you're familiar with the plot points of another movie it's going out of its way to mimic.

Oddly enough, something that made Alien Uprising more palatable than I may have found it otherwise was completely unintentional. The screener DVD Maverick Entertainment sent me goes to black & white after the opening few minutes and stays that way for the rest of the movie. DVD screeners dipping to black & white and having some sort of watermark are commonplace to try and discourage piracy, but this is the first time I've ever seen one where it goes black & white and stays black & white. Given the director's use of shadows and light, the black & white compliments it in a way that seeing it in full color may not have. Also, the sets don't look as cheap, the computer effects don't look as fake, the monster doesn't look like entirely like a guy in a headpiece, and the atmosphere of the production becomes a little bit spookier.

My advice to anyone interested in viewing Alien Uprising is to either find a way to switch your television to black & white and watch it that way or just watch it on a black & white television. Doing so, watching this film will feel a lot more like watching one of those talky yet eerie monochrome science fiction monster movies from the Fifties and Sixties along the lines of It! The Terror from Beyond Space, which, coincidentally, also happens to be the movie that inspired Alien in the first place.

2 1/2 STARS