Almost human (2013)

Guy watches friend get abducted by aliens and no one believes him. A couple of years later friend returns and starts a rampage of  bloody Xtro reenactments.

I wanted to like this Xtro homage more than I did, it has a number of good points like a simple but fun plot and a lot of really bloody old school violence. Josh Ethier is an excellent lumbering hulk of a monster and while some of the minor characters are pretty mediocre, the leads do an ok job. Unfortunately Almost human is a bit too short to really go anywhere special, it runs through the usual numbers in its brief 80 min running time (of which 8 are really, really slow end credits). It might sound like I didn't like the movie, I did, but it had the potential of being something more, something squishier and gloopier but instead chose the easy way out. If you compare it to the obvious influence, Xtro, it is so much more restrained and by the numbers. I suppose it might have been a budgetary issue so we'll have to do with what we have now which is a fairly fun and gory monstermovie, which isn't actually that bad. I look forward to what writer/director Joe Begos comes up with in the future because there is nothing about his direction and scriptwriting to complain about, on the contrary. It's just that somewhere on the way his vision got a bit limited. Until next time. I'll be there waiting.