Stranded (2013)

 

I actually preordered this movie just from reading the plot, I am that much of a sucker for scifi/horrors. I mean, come on. Meteorite crashes on moonbase, bringing spores that infect a woman that goes instantly pregnant and within 24 hours gives birth to a humanoid thingie with a predator-ish mandible mouth. I did not go on Imdb to read reviews or look it up online, I had to have it. It was as simple as that. Roger Christian, the director, will always live in infamy because of him being responsible for Battlefield Earth but we have to remember that he also directed The Sender, a very underrated little chiller back in the early days of his career.

Stranded is quite a timeless movie, it doesn't have any clothes or technology that specifically places it in a particular time and it uses miniatures instead of CGI. It could easily have been set in the 80s or the 2000s. In fact, the only thing that actually tells us that we are watching a movie made in 2013 is the fact that Christian Slater is getting "older-ish" (That man has aged well, that's for sure). It feels like it could have been a Roger Corman production, released by either New World or Concorde. The story is straight out of a fifties scifi movie and gets in gear without any real character setup, the meteorites start smashing the half-decent models right after the credits and moves on at a good pace introducing the ways of the creature right up until the cliched ending. It doesn't try to break any new ground whatsoever and works fine just because of that. Sure, the actors are bland (mostly because of the weak characters) and the movie could have gone for a bit more of the ole' gross-factor but the important thing is that you never have the chance to be bored. It won't be remembered as a cult classic in the years to come but I sure as hell don't regret buying it. It's no Forbidden world but you could do much worse.