(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for the final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“In 1947, in New Mexico, a radio operator receives a signal following regular patterns. While investigating the occurrence, he vanishes. In the present day, the same signal is transmitted from a base in the Falkland Islands to United States of America and a satellite captures images of an unknown object in Antartic. The cryptologist Julien Rome is invited to investigate the mystery in the South Pole, and he flies to a research base. While a team tries to open a weird shell probably from the outer space, Julien solves the message, which proves to be a distress signal ordering not to open the case.”
Folks, there’s one unavoidable problem if you’re going to craft a Science Fiction film and set it in either the Arctic or Antarctic: you’re automatically risking comparison to two of the genre’s best efforts – 1951’s The Thing From Another World and its 1982 remake The Thing.
Now, if that’s what you want to do, then so be it. Me? Well, I’d rather leave myself a fair amount of wiggle room to try to get something tonally right all on my own; but storytellers are ultimately going to do what storytellers are going to do. Perhaps by mustering up such associations, directors and screenwriters feel that they’re in good territory, that they’re going to reap some associational benefits from those haloes previously hoisted over greater productions, and maybe they’re experience greater goodwill from audiences who recognize the rather obvious similarities. No, haters, I’m not saying that there are no other alien-adjacent adventures that can’t be set in the cold: I’m simply underscoring it’s a huge, huge, huge risk, and – in that respect – Alien Hunter never really had a chance.
In fact, I wonder if a great number of folks who’ve found this curious picture wind up feeling more than a bit cheated. For example, when you cast a star like James Spader – who has fostered and developed a certain performance charm all of his own – why allot so little time for him to do what he does so uniquely well? His bookish eccentricity made 1994’s Stargate a vastly better film than it would’ve been without his contributions, but Hunter pretty much sidelines him with sequences working with computers or staring intently into one of the many dark spaces he tries to explore in this subterranean base once it all goes to shit. (FYI: it always goes to shit in thrillers of this variety.) That and the fact that he’s the aforementioned ‘Alien Hunter’ of the title – leaving very little room for authentic aliens – would probably have some heading for the exits before this clunker even gets to the final reel.
Julian Rome (played by Spader) is a communications and linguistics expert who experienced a professional fall from grace when he attached a bit too much of his profile to mankind’s somewhat failed SETI experiment, the defunct program whose intention it was to contact extraterrestrial life. Now making ends meet via his college professorship, he winds up being pulled back into the search when a research team in Antarctica find what they suspect could be a frozen alien craft emitting an electronic message. Essentially sent to decipher what everyone believes could be a new language, he eventually learns that the communique is actually a warning, one that gets lost in the shuffle once the creature that is trapped inside suddenly gets out.
As a rather conventional thriller, Alien Hunter has a good number of the required pieces for success. The problem lies almost entirely in its substandard assembly, and I’ll try to highlight what worked and didn’t in the process.
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“In 1947, in New Mexico, a radio operator receives a signal following regular patterns. While investigating the occurrence, he vanishes. In the present day, the same signal is transmitted from a base in the Falkland Islands to United States of America and a satellite captures images of an unknown object in Antartic. The cryptologist Julien Rome is invited to investigate the mystery in the South Pole, and he flies to a research base. While a team tries to open a weird shell probably from the outer space, Julien solves the message, which proves to be a distress signal ordering not to open the case.”
Folks, there’s one unavoidable problem if you’re going to craft a Science Fiction film and set it in either the Arctic or Antarctic: you’re automatically risking comparison to two of the genre’s best efforts – 1951’s The Thing From Another World and its 1982 remake The Thing.
Now, if that’s what you want to do, then so be it. Me? Well, I’d rather leave myself a fair amount of wiggle room to try to get something tonally right all on my own; but storytellers are ultimately going to do what storytellers are going to do. Perhaps by mustering up such associations, directors and screenwriters feel that they’re in good territory, that they’re going to reap some associational benefits from those haloes previously hoisted over greater productions, and maybe they’re experience greater goodwill from audiences who recognize the rather obvious similarities. No, haters, I’m not saying that there are no other alien-adjacent adventures that can’t be set in the cold: I’m simply underscoring it’s a huge, huge, huge risk, and – in that respect – Alien Hunter never really had a chance.
In fact, I wonder if a great number of folks who’ve found this curious picture wind up feeling more than a bit cheated. For example, when you cast a star like James Spader – who has fostered and developed a certain performance charm all of his own – why allot so little time for him to do what he does so uniquely well? His bookish eccentricity made 1994’s Stargate a vastly better film than it would’ve been without his contributions, but Hunter pretty much sidelines him with sequences working with computers or staring intently into one of the many dark spaces he tries to explore in this subterranean base once it all goes to shit. (FYI: it always goes to shit in thrillers of this variety.) That and the fact that he’s the aforementioned ‘Alien Hunter’ of the title – leaving very little room for authentic aliens – would probably have some heading for the exits before this clunker even gets to the final reel.
Julian Rome (played by Spader) is a communications and linguistics expert who experienced a professional fall from grace when he attached a bit too much of his profile to mankind’s somewhat failed SETI experiment, the defunct program whose intention it was to contact extraterrestrial life. Now making ends meet via his college professorship, he winds up being pulled back into the search when a research team in Antarctica find what they suspect could be a frozen alien craft emitting an electronic message. Essentially sent to decipher what everyone believes could be a new language, he eventually learns that the communique is actually a warning, one that gets lost in the shuffle once the creature that is trapped inside suddenly gets out.
As a rather conventional thriller, Alien Hunter has a good number of the required pieces for success. The problem lies almost entirely in its substandard assembly, and I’ll try to highlight what worked and didn’t in the process.
First up, there’s entirely too much set-up, some of which becomes cumbersome to the pace. Hunter opens with a scene meant to tie this early 2000’s adventure to Roswell, New Mexico – the granddaddy of all alien fish stories around. Back in 1947, a ham radio operator stumbles across an unexplained signal – the same that’ll challenge Rome’s intellectual curiosity fifty years later – and the man sets out to investigate. Eventually, audiences are led to believe that the man may or may not have been abducted (it’s left unclear); and this vignette only comes up again late in the picture when Rome’s university boss – Dr. John Bachman (Roy Dotrice) – gets conscripted by the U.S. government to explain away the mystery (in an obvious information dump of exposition) to his employee via radio.
Second, screenwriters J.S. Cardone and Boaz Davidson felt it was apparently necessary to craft some scenes of Rome doing his teaching thing at the university. Some might conclude that this was intended to be character development; and – to a small degree – that’s entirely possible as viewers learn not once but twice that the man has a penchant for entertaining coeds privately. However, the educator’s character flaws comes up a third time – once he’s arrived at the distant base – in a spot where it feels vastly more relevant because it links him to another key researcher – Kate Brecher (Janine Eser) – he joins on this mission. Yet because the script felt it necessary to keep reminding us over so short a time of Rome’s dalliances – rest assured, it comes up again – the man now seems like less of an expert and more of an unprincipled womanizer. When the bloom is this far off the rose, it becomes harder and harder to see ‘our hero’ as ‘our hero.’
Lastly, Hunter struggles to ever really find a central thread to truly tug its audience comfortably from start-to-finish. The narrative twists and turns so much that one wonders if the screenwriters were deliberately throwing more into it just because they could, perhaps worrying that its slowly simmering pace would work against an audience hanging around for the finish. Like the aforementioned The Thing From Another World and more so with The Thing, there’s an attempt to pit these folks against one another, but it falls flat mostly because it’s entirely contrived in the moment instead of slowly stepping toward this natural development. Also, there’s no fundamentally clear explanation for who the alien race is – they do show up, I believe, but I’m really at a loss to understand exactly why they did or why they do what they do – nor is it clearly plotted out what their central goal was in the last reel. What some might see as a conclusion I saw as yet one more bit of spaghetti thrown at the wall in hopes that something might stick.
Alien Hunter (2003) was produced by Millennium Films and Sandstorm Films. The film shows presently available for physical or digital purchase via Amazon.com, but readers are always encouraged to check out their own avenues if they’re looking to spend some hard-earned cash. As for the technical specifications? Well, while I’m no trained video expert, I really was a bit underwhelmed with the flick: the effects are fairly ineffective (the creature effects are quite good, but they’re in very short supply), and there’s very little novelty to any of the cinematography. In fact, there are a few sequences early on that look incredibly poor. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? Alas, I viewed this one via streaming, so there were no special features under consideration.
Alas … Barely Recommended.
With Alien Hunter (2003), I kept struggling with the central issue of just what audience this mild SciFi/Thriller thought it was meant to achieve: casual viewers or die-hard Science Fiction enthusiasts. Sadly, I suspect neither will come away with any sense of contentment. Cardone and Davidson’s script really goes nowhere, never developing a sense of tension around the rather obvious discovery of extraterrestrial technology and an involved lifeform nor giving its characters all that much to do than stand around and try to look engaged with one another or the overdone premise. The ending reminds me of something James Cameron once did (FYI: I didn’t like it then, either), leaving the door wide open for either a follow-up installment (which never came) or what audience was still watching to try to figure out what came next all by their lonesome. A real mess of a picture.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that I’m beholden to no one for this review of Alien Hunter (2003) as I watched it via my very own Amazon Prime Video subscription.
-- EZ
Second, screenwriters J.S. Cardone and Boaz Davidson felt it was apparently necessary to craft some scenes of Rome doing his teaching thing at the university. Some might conclude that this was intended to be character development; and – to a small degree – that’s entirely possible as viewers learn not once but twice that the man has a penchant for entertaining coeds privately. However, the educator’s character flaws comes up a third time – once he’s arrived at the distant base – in a spot where it feels vastly more relevant because it links him to another key researcher – Kate Brecher (Janine Eser) – he joins on this mission. Yet because the script felt it necessary to keep reminding us over so short a time of Rome’s dalliances – rest assured, it comes up again – the man now seems like less of an expert and more of an unprincipled womanizer. When the bloom is this far off the rose, it becomes harder and harder to see ‘our hero’ as ‘our hero.’
Lastly, Hunter struggles to ever really find a central thread to truly tug its audience comfortably from start-to-finish. The narrative twists and turns so much that one wonders if the screenwriters were deliberately throwing more into it just because they could, perhaps worrying that its slowly simmering pace would work against an audience hanging around for the finish. Like the aforementioned The Thing From Another World and more so with The Thing, there’s an attempt to pit these folks against one another, but it falls flat mostly because it’s entirely contrived in the moment instead of slowly stepping toward this natural development. Also, there’s no fundamentally clear explanation for who the alien race is – they do show up, I believe, but I’m really at a loss to understand exactly why they did or why they do what they do – nor is it clearly plotted out what their central goal was in the last reel. What some might see as a conclusion I saw as yet one more bit of spaghetti thrown at the wall in hopes that something might stick.
Alien Hunter (2003) was produced by Millennium Films and Sandstorm Films. The film shows presently available for physical or digital purchase via Amazon.com, but readers are always encouraged to check out their own avenues if they’re looking to spend some hard-earned cash. As for the technical specifications? Well, while I’m no trained video expert, I really was a bit underwhelmed with the flick: the effects are fairly ineffective (the creature effects are quite good, but they’re in very short supply), and there’s very little novelty to any of the cinematography. In fact, there are a few sequences early on that look incredibly poor. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? Alas, I viewed this one via streaming, so there were no special features under consideration.
Alas … Barely Recommended.
With Alien Hunter (2003), I kept struggling with the central issue of just what audience this mild SciFi/Thriller thought it was meant to achieve: casual viewers or die-hard Science Fiction enthusiasts. Sadly, I suspect neither will come away with any sense of contentment. Cardone and Davidson’s script really goes nowhere, never developing a sense of tension around the rather obvious discovery of extraterrestrial technology and an involved lifeform nor giving its characters all that much to do than stand around and try to look engaged with one another or the overdone premise. The ending reminds me of something James Cameron once did (FYI: I didn’t like it then, either), leaving the door wide open for either a follow-up installment (which never came) or what audience was still watching to try to figure out what came next all by their lonesome. A real mess of a picture.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that I’m beholden to no one for this review of Alien Hunter (2003) as I watched it via my very own Amazon Prime Video subscription.
-- EZ
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