Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'First Contact' (2016)

SPOILERS!!!

Yes, that means it's bad.

But can we talk about how dumb the Great Filter Theory has gotten? There is no mysterious dark force, there's no great cosmic entity, there's just intelligent life failing the test of civilization. Hell, WE humans, are failing the test of civilization. Between our inability to control viruses like COVID, or super drug-resistant bacteria and fungus, or record hot temperatures causing melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and desertification, or our underfunded space program that basically can't do shit about cosmic impacts, or our giant nuclear boners ready to pop at any moment because any number of world leaders got their fee fees hurt, take your fucking pic. WE might not be around long enough to explore the stars.

Every life form with extremely rare exception, is driven by the instinct to maximize its own personal reproduction. The only thing that guarantees an intelligent lifeform doesn't simply burn through its resources at the cost of everyone else's is civilization. However, the problem with civilization is that it does not guarantee equity. I know for a fact every intelligent civilization will have its own version of Billionaires. Single individuals or small groups that attempt to control the rest so they can privately soak up resources simply to maximize their own comfort. 99.99999999% of life will inevitably do this. Therefore, in order to pass the test of civilization, that intelligent life form will have to create a civilization that makes it to the stars before it wipes itself out through greedy hoarding of resources. There's your fucking filter right there. Infinite numbers of intelligent species cut down to countable numbers by simply wiping themselves out.

Enough about The Great Filter, back to the review. This movie sucked. The premise wasn't even all that interesting. A bad alien possesses a guy to destroy civilization and a good alien possesses a guy to protect civilization... that sounds like a fucking kids movie. Isn't that literally just the plot of Transformers (2007)? So bad alien at least gets a fun transformation which leads to a pretty respectable rubber monster, but good alien is like the fucking guy from Star Man (1984). He's fucking useless.

The thing is, this is billed as some form of cosmic horror but also alien invasion horror, but not only does it not deliver cosmic horror, it doesn't even deliver alien invasion horror. It doesn't deliver much, to be honest. I mean, I guess the acting is standard for horror. Honestly, the actors do deserve credit for the job they did. Nothing award-winning, but definitely good enough.

One of my biggest problems is the bad alien and his human skin suit. Like, motherfucker looks like a zombie and is acting like a psycho but everyone just tries to deal with it like it's normal. Like, mother fucker, I would have called someone. Like... literally anyone. Sure, no one would know what to do in a situation like that, but they would definitely try to get informed help. A doctor, a priest maybe?

What really kills this movie is just how BORING it is. Yes, something is always happening but it's always deeply uninteresting. It's just spread on too thin. It may have been more interesting if all of this nothing was tightly packed together. Maybe in a 45 minute short? It just always felt like padding, no matter how essential it might have been to the plot. Like the main characters discovering their father's research. That only needed about five minutes but they're always splitting it up in little snippets. Or the bad alien and how it's always trying to find other people to do its damn job for it, rather than just immediately trying to do it its damn self. It's just super hard to care about anything that's going on.

I guess the movie is pretty riffable. Not like its made for riffing, but you may enjoy it with some friends and a couple beers. I can barely even recommend it for riffing, it's just seriously not worth it.