#726 – Alien Weekend (2024)

Alien Weekend (2024)

Film review #726

Director: Taylor King

SYNOPSIS: Four friends stumble upon an alien egg that crash lands onto Earth, and try to protect it from the government, evil aliens, and everybody else…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Alien Weekend is a 2024 sci-fi film. Violet and her three friends witness an alien craft fall to Earth while out on the road. It turns out to contain an alien egg for the last female of their species, and Violet takes it to protect from another race of evil aliens, and the government who want the egg to experiment on. The result is a kind of road trip movie sprinkled with some teenage banter and sci-fi antics that mix comedy with some coming-of-age realisations. Emerging from a humble production and without much of a budget, it’s easy not to expect much from this film; but nevertheless I did have a good time with it. The characters are quickly recognisable as having distinct personalities that fall into very typical roles, but they still provide a clash of personalities and personal dilemmas that mix well. I don’t think there’s anything too unique in the characters or story: any detail is skimmed over that reveal anything too personal, but there’s specific scenes which are dedicated to giving characters emotional moments and development which are nice enough, if a little inorganic, as you can feel the specific objective of the scene over everything else happening within it.

As I said, I felt the film was quite funny: it’s not smart humour, but there’s enough quick one-liners or clapbacks that get a reciprocal quick laugh before moving on. There’s enough of these put together to see the film through the runtime, if nothing else. Some of the supporting characters are a little weak, and there comes a point where I think there’s too many of them to cohesively bring them together; some are fine though. There are points too where characters don’t appear for a good portion of the film, and their purpose gets waylaid. The big thing that would have improved this film is some more direction to bring out more impact from the scenes, as it sometimes feels like the point gets lost amid the purposely inane dialogue. For example, a lot of the camera shots are very straight-on and without any focus, and since a lot of the scenes are empty of in pitch-black, there’s barely anything to focus on. The acting itself isn’t too bad, but I think better direction with it would have had benefits; I can see why people might bounce off the irreverent teenage slang thrown at you at the beginning in vast quantities

But overall, I enjoyed this film more than I expected: it’s fun, silly, and hits enough emotional depth and development of the characters to make it worthwhile taking this journey with them. It’s not able to do anything too exciting with it’s budget, but enough moments to keep things fun until the end.