Knowing that a new Alien movie is coming out, you know there will be a mockbuster to cash in on it. So the appearance of Alien Hunt is no shock. What might be surprising is that it’s not The Asylum this time, but prolific indie filmmaker Aaron Mirtes (The OctoGames, The Alpha Test).
In its opening scenes, the danger isn’t so much from the alien itself (Adam Pietripaoli, Child of Love, The Bigfoot Trap) as it is from other humans two animal control officers responding to a call about a wild dog are shot dead by Sergeant Waters (Chelsey Fuller, Sigma Die!, Best Laid Plans). Her boss, Dr. Edmondson (Jesse Santoyo, Nashville Country Christmas, Potter’s Ground) is pragmatic about it: “Bring me the bodies; we can use them.”
Five years later Emily (Megan Nielsen, Damascus Mountain Time, Gritty Romance) has just lost her job. To take her mind off things she agrees to come back home and go hunting with her brothers Mark (Barron Boedecker, Escape Pod, Hot Air) and JJ (Brent Bentley, The Perfect In-Laws, The Diner) and their friend Amir (Deiondre Teagle Death Ranch , Don’t Date Your Sister).
Can you guess where they’re going? Can you guess who and what is still there?
If you’ve never seen one of Mirtes’ films before then I should tell you that while they’re not microbudget films they are very low budget. And while he’s pretty good at working around that lack of cash he doesn’t seem to have tried to make Alien Hunt look good. The most obvious problem is what we’re supposed to believer is a top secret government project involving captured aliens has two people working on it; an obviously mad scientist and single security person, and a couple pieces of equipment in a cave.
Waters tells a park ranger there are others but he says he’s never seen them, and neither do we. Couldn’t Mirtes have gotten a couple buddies to walk around in camo and then die off-screen if there wasn’t money to film the creature taking them out? It would have made things look at least a little more plausible.
The other plot point that had me scratching my head was having four people go hunting with one gun between them. Emily hasn’t been hunting since she was a kid, but the others should have their rifles. It’s an incredibly unlikely way of keeping the odds against our heroes There’s also an absurd argument about “White Privilege” and “Yankee Privilege” in the middle of what should be a tense standoff.
Also forget about the “formidable army of alien soldiers” the film’s PR talks about. There’s one creature; its name is Trixie, that’s it. On the plus side it is a practical effect, as are the few bits of gore we see. But it looks like an actor in an Alien costume they got for Halloween. And for some reason rather than sticking to night scenes and keeping it behind trees etc they keep showing it out in the open during daylight when its short comings are all too obvious.
Alien Hunt seemed like it would have been a low budget monster movie filled with fun. I knew it wouldn’t be Predator 2, but maybe Without Warning or one of the even cheesier Italian ones like Shocking Dark. Instead, it was a boring disaster that the director himself couldn’t have cared less about because he can do so much better than this.
Watch Alien Hunt For Free On Putlocker.