Alien Siege – review

Director: Robert Stadd

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Oh lawdy. This came on my radar as an alien vampire film and it is (in a very loose definition of vampire sense). It is also a film that was made specifically for the sci-fi channel. It really struggles therefore with script, narrative, acting and any level of budget to make this look as good as it should want to look.

It is set on an Earth in which we have been visited by the Kulku, an advanced alien race. Later we hear they pride themselves on their intergalactic philanthropic works but that is not the case with us. You see, there is a pandemic on their home planet, a virus that threatens to make the race extinct and the cure is… human blood. So they have essentially invaded, using advance tech that we can’t fight against. The film is six weeks later…

alien lander launches

So, the Kulku have demanded we hand over 8 million people. It is up to each nation to do their bit, and it is suggested that many nations handed over their prison populations. America have to hand over 800,000 people and rather than use prisoners (which, in reality, I recon would be America’s go to policy) they have decided to do a random lottery and if your name comes up you are detained by human military and sent for processing by the space vamps. There is a basic maths issue here as the film suggests that 650,000 Americans had been handed over but there are 300,000 to go…. Something doesn’t add up.

nozzle delivery

The other issue that the invaders have is that the Kulku travelled via a wormhole and… well the explanation was a bit odd but it got them to Earth (and it is a one way trip) but they can send things back through – just not living things so the aliens are stuck but the blood apparently can be sent back (they don’t just suck the blood out, but liquidise the person apparently, and then three shower nozzles spray the blood into a pod, yeah really – and the idea of asking for planet wide donations is not touched on). This ignores the fact that blood is essentially living tissue – what property they need to make a cure and why it works when inert is not answered.

Erin Ross as Heather

So, the film is essentially an intergalactic version of the Trolley Problem. Of course, it needs a human interest side and this is found through Dr Stephen Chase (Brad Johnson) who discovers that his daughter, Heather (Erin Ross), has been chosen and so tries to hide her. That doesn’t go very well and she is taken for processing. He tries to swap himself for her but it appears she has a blood anomaly that the Kulku have been looking for and her blood can produce many more cures, so they won’t let him stand in for her. However, there is a resistance who attack the facility and Chase manages to get to the leaders with a proposition – save Heather and he’ll give them special tech.

Brad Johnson as Chase

Now, one might question why (and how) a race living so far from Earth that they need a wormhole and cannot travel back by conventional means would know that human blood would cure the virus? Well, apparently, they’ve been here before and Roswell was a crash of one of their scout ships. Chase has been a lead researcher trying to backwards engineer their tech. Issues, issues. One, we have no idea how they got to and from Earth that time, did they abduct humans – if so they may know what our blood is like, I guess, but its still a stretch to think that it would be, and they would know it would be, the cure for their illness. And then there are the coincidences – the daughter of an alien tech researcher is chosen in lottery (and somehow he knows, we don’t hear how), she just happens to have anomalous blood, and she happens to be taken to a processing centre that the resistance happens to attack (for the most part humanity seem to be sleepwalking into this).

a Kulku

As for the Kulku… well they look remarkably like us, save having dyed blonde eyebrows, a black mark at the neck (which, when we see the black marks of the virus, I assumed was a viral lesion, but that doesn’t vanish when someone is cured whereas the lesions over the torso do vanish) and a grey dot on the cheek – which turns out to be a comms device. The spaceships and lasers are cgi generated. The acting is wooden throughout. The dialogue is awful (and the docile lottery people feel outstandingly unrealistic… go over there… ok… in reality, surely they would try and overpower the small number of army guards and not a one seems to cry, despite knowing they are going to be liquidised to make alien medicine – there is a touch on more realistic reactions when a hunted “winner” jumps from a high building rather than surrender). Really quite poor but the taking of human blood to prolong life (by staving of a deadly virus) puts it onto our radar. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK