With the new Alien movie coming out, it was only a matter of time before someone made a mockbusters parody to exploit it, and I guess Alien Hunt didn’t disappoint. What might actually come as a shock, unlike other mockbusters, this is not by The Asylum, but Aaron Mirtes, an overworked independent filmmaker (The OctoGames, The Alpha Test).
In these opening moments of the film, the alien’s main threat does not come from the alien (Adam Pietripaoli, Child of Love, The Bigfoot Trap) but from a group of other people. Two animal control officers assigned to deal with a report of a wild dog are dispatched by Sergeant Waters (Chelsey Fuller, Sigma Die!, Best Laid Plans). Dr. Edmondson (Jesse Santoyo, Nashville Country Christmas, Potter’s Ground), her superior, shows little concern, “Bring me the bodies, we can use them.” As always, the famous scientist is pragmatic.
Emily (Megan Nielsen, Damascus Mountain Time, Gritty Romance), five years later, has recently been unemployed. To help distract her, she agrees to come visit 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).
I need to say this before I dive deep into the analysis of this film: Mirtes’ works, or at least the ones I have seen, do not fall under the category of microbudget films. They are definitely low-budget works, but not microbudget. Alien Hunt is one of the films he hasn’t put any effort to make it visually appealing and one can easily tell that he struggles with cash. This film does have a number of key noticeable problems, such as the supposed to be a secret government project of actually trying to study an alien whilst having only two people in staff. There is a singular member of security, a mad scientist, along with a few pieces of gear inside of a cave. That is everything.
Waters does go on to say to one of the park rangers that there are other people, however, that ranger says that they do not exist and neither do we. If Mirtes was struggling with minimal budget and he wanted something more realistic, why not just get a few friends to wear camo and pretend to get killed off screen? This would have definitely made the film more interesting.
Another point that made me simply shake my head was the fact that four people go for a hunt with a single rifle among them. Yes, Emily hasn’t been hunting since she was a child, but the others should at least have their rifles. It’s a very unlikely way of setting up the odds against our heroes. There’s also an utterly foolish dispute about “White Privilege” and “Yankee Privilege” in the middle of what should have been a very tense standoff.
You can also disregard the “formidable army of alien soldiers,” the which the film’s PR speaks about. There’s one single creature, and its name is Trixie, that’s all. On the more favorable 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 for Halloween, an endeavor they settled for. And, for some unknown reason, instead of sticking to the night scenes and keeping it behind trees, they keep showing it out in the open during the day when it’s obvious its shortcomings are all too glaring.
My expectations for what Alien Hunt promised to deliver were low-budget monster mayhem, which is more than I could hope for. When I pressed play, I didn’t expect it to be on the level of Predator, but something like Without Warning or even some of the more ridiculous Italian knockoffs like Shocking Dark would have worked. Instead I got a filthy mess that neither the filmmaker, nor I cared about, even though he can and has done better.
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