Reposting my review from the
ExIsle BBS:
--------
Overall, this is a good film. What it succeeds in being is a smart modern homage to the storytelling style of '50s sci-fi B movies. The story has the cheesiness of the films of the period, but is played sincerely enough that it works; since the actors are playing it straight rather than winking at the audience, you can buy into it as well as you could with any real movie from that period. The script is pretty good, a nice blend of atomic-age scares with the optimism of films like
The Day the Earth Stood Still and
It Came From Outer Space (the latter film being one of its major influences). The cast is good; Eric McCormack (formerly of
Will and Grace) is too broad as Dr. Lewis, but effectively unearthly and sympathetic as Marshall Urp, the alien lawman who takes over Lewis's body. Jenni Baird (Meghan Doyle from
The 4400) is a very strong, engaging female lead and really the heart of the film. Jody Thompson captures '50s sexiness very well as Lewis's wife. And Dan Lauria is effectively grouchy as the skeptical police chief. The story becomes increasingly suspenseful as time passes and you get more immersed in its world, more invested in the characters through the actors' performances. The film climaxes with a lovely speech by Baird, full of '50s optimism about the wonders of the universe.
What it doesn't succeed in being, however, is what it initially claims to be in the optional introduction and the opening newsreel segment: a plausible simulation of an "actual" 1957 movie that was never released. There is no way in which this could've been a '50s film. It looks like it was shot on digital video, certainly not on authentic period film stock. The visual effects are blatantly computer-animated, and many shots are clearly on virtual sets. The music, by
Smallville's Louis Febre, is a good pastiche of '50s film music, complete with a genuine Theremin, but it's definitely electronic (though a better fake of an orchestral sound than usual for an electronic score). There are some anachronisms, things that never would've gotten past the censors in 1957 -- a man in bed with his wife, references to bodily functions, children being killed by the monster. There are product placements in dialogue. There's a lot less smoking than would be authentic. Some of the slang is too modern ("What is it with you guys?") and some is too self-consciously '50s (an overuse of "cats"). A reference to "those new Polaroid cameras" is also a bit too self-consciously '50s, as is the line "The Edsel will be around forever" -- the one moment where a bit of postmodern irony sneaks into the otherwise straightforward presentation of the film's setting.
And of course, it's so loaded with homages to '50s sci-fi movies that it would've been decried as a ripoff had it actually been made in that era. Marshall Urp in his native form is a cross between Klaatu and Gort, and the interior design of his saucer evokes TDTESS as well. The Gota monster is right out of Roger Corman's
It Conquered the World. And the movie-theater climax is such an overt homage to
The Blob that it actually includes the movie-theater scene from
The Blob being played in the movie theater in the film -- a dizzyingly recursive bit of self-reference, complete with the film's teenage characters watching
The Blob in hopes of getting ideas for how to deal with the real monster stalking their town.
Perhaps the largest anachronism is Jenni Baird's central role in the action of the film and in its climax. Any studio getting this script in the '50s would've insisted that audiences would never buy such a commanding female presence, that she needed to be made softer and marginalized in favor of a male hero. It's a nice "what might have been" scenario, a chance to see what a '50s B-movie would've been like without the sexism, but it's not period-authentic.
So starting this film off with the introductory material presenting it as a "genuine" 1957 film was its greatest mistake, because it sets up expectations that the rest of the film doesn't even try to meet. If you go into this expecting a believable simulation of a film made in 1957, you'll be disappointed and aware of all the ways it fails to achieve that. The way to look at this film -- the way it should have presented itself -- is as a 2009 film that does a good job of telling a story in the vein of a '50s B-movie. It's definitely a B-movie, a low-budget production with cheesy effects, but it's low-budget and cheesy in a very modern way. So it captures the spirit of '50s B-movies better than the details.
Still, once you get past the brief initial conceit of
Alien Trespass as a "lost 1957 classic" and just watch it as a period piece made from a modern perspective, it works pretty well.
---------
Another anachronism was pointed out to me by another Ex Isle member who's a film scholar: no 1957 movie title would've used the word "alien" in the sense of "being from space." Though that term was around in prose science fiction long before then, it wasn't really popularized more broadly until the '60s, and was apparently never used in that sense in a movie title earlier than 1970. (Earlier movie titles using "alien" always used it in the sense of "foreigner.")
