Reviews

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  ★★★★½ review by nathaxnne walker on Letterboxd

  Awesomely, Knowingly Dumb, Extraterrestrial is Everything I want and need in a College Kids In Cabin-In-The-Woods Menaced By Aliens movie. This is the kind of movie that wants to show you a good time, if your idea of a good time is watching dumb college kids make lots of ridiculous errors when confronting Unfriendly E.T. and paying the ultimate price over and over again. This movie knows that what you want is a Michael Ironside cameo where he is a walking, talking, pot-growing, paranoid exposition dump and that you want to see Gil Bellows as a depressed sheriff who has lost his wife years back to sudden abduction and that you are Really Happy to see Emily Perkins do anything ever but mostly you want an awesome stoner girl to tell her Irish Setter Rusty to 'stop being so aggro'. If the thought of these things makes you smile involuntarily, then you need to watch Extraterrestrial immediately. Also, and super-importantly, this movie knows that what you want is an Slasher-infused 90's Abduction Horror Reheat more than almost anything else in life, unless that anything else is Michael Ironside delivering Kind Buds directly to your house, and then staying to hang out and eat vegan pizza. It knows that in order to do that, it needs to call upon the now-ancient but endlessly recalled collective memory of legions of EDM remixes of Twin Peaks/X-Files Theme Anthems for its score. Everything about Extraterrestrial rocks. I wish I could have seen this in the theatre, and brought all my friends with me, and more than once.

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  ★★★★½ review by thedarkhours on Letterboxd

  The Butcher Brothers made Grave Encounters, which I've seen a couple times, and every time it's consistently entertaining. Everything just works in the that film, the acting, the plot, the script; everything.

  So it was with some trepidation that I started Extraterrestrial because I wasn't sure if the Brothers could match Grave Encounters. Well, Extraterrestrial is good alright. The whole film is just... cool. The scenes are fun to watch and the gore is nasty and brutal.

  The cinematography and directing decisions are top notch. The cast is likable and the effects are great. The aliens are some of the best thin, grey aliens I've ever seen. The alien spacecraft looks good and it doesn't look like overly processed CGI.

  There is a strange side plot with a sheriff that doesn't go where I thought it would but it ends in the best way possible so that made it worth it. The best part is that the cast is likable so I actually cared about who lived and who died; even the "jerk" character.

  The thing that polarizes most people is the ending. It's a little weird, a little... off the beaten track. You'll either like or hate it because it's that odd. But definitely watch the movie. I LOVED it.

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  ★★★½ review by Rick D on Letterboxd

  Rewatching - and I enjoyed it more the 2nd time. A decent alien flick. I thought it played out well and gave you enough of the greys to keep you interested. Cameos by Emily Perkins and Michael Ironside were well-done. The kids were not as bad as I originally thought they were going to be. Enjoyed some of the subtle humor throughout although mostly at the end of the movie. The end had a much different atmosphere than the first 3/4 of the movie. EFX were quite good. The end still is a surprise and has an X-Files type ending.

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  ★★★½ review by Matt Thomas on Letterboxd

  Really effective. The director makes clever use of his limited budget and wisely withholds from the camera the aliens for long periods. The final act steps up a gear nicely too but remains smart instead of resorting to chase me / take me stuff. I'd be happy to watch more from this DoP too. Neil Marshall kept spring to mind.

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  ★★★★ review by Jason Alley on Letterboxd

  Highly entertaining and surprisingly unpredictable alien abduction horror film that is basically THE EVIL DEAD with aliens. There's some questionable acting here and there, but overall it's a whole lot of fun.

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