Movie Review - Alien Raiders (2008)

It’s amazing how many movies are made and end up to be direct-to-DVD, sometimes they’re duds and sometimes not. This movie is in the middle as far as far as quality goes but was a little on the fun side. I just finished watching "Alien Raiders" (2008). Sounds intriguing? It did for me.

The film opens with a grocery store closing for the night, located in a small town some where in Arizona. The cashier is just taking the last of the customers and the store manager has just announced that the store is closing. The scene then switches to a van pulling up. Enter a group of masked gunmen who yell out that this is a robbery. Everyone in the store is frightened and hides. Some shots are fired and some are killed. The masked men soon take control and lock the doors. What seemingly looks like a robbery turns out to more of a 'witch' hunt. One by one each patron is investigated and interrogated by a man telepathically. You soon find out that the group is really scientists searching for an alien organism which they have traced to be at the store. The interrogator gets shot by a cop who was in the store and now it’s back to the old method - chopping of a finger. By this time there are police outside the door trying to negotiate for the return of the hostages. Some who passed the scan are able to leave while the others are left behind. The hostages later find out that they are dealing with an alien parasite and must band together with their captors to fight the alien controlled host.

The story wasn’t bad, holds some merit but I felt that more could have been done. A little bit of a twist I think, it kept me guessing. To me it was almost like ‘Clue’ meets ‘The Usual Suspects' meets 'Alien’ with 'The Mist'. This movie is low budget –obviously, filmed in a grocery store. I think it is an independent film. The pace of the movie was fantastic. There were a few decent gore scenes and the effects were acceptable. The acting was okay nothing too terrible.

It’s up to you if you want to give it a go. I personally like independent low budget films so I give an 'A' for effort but rate it 6/10.