#672 – 51 (2011)

51 (2011)

Film review #672

Director: Jason Connery

SYNOPSIS: Under political and public pressure, the U.S. government opens up Area 51 to a limited tour for a select group of journalists. However, the aliens that are secretly beyond the journalists eye manage to break out, and everyone is forced to fight for their survival against the horrors roaming the facility…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: 51 is a 2011 sci-fi TV movie that premiered on the Syfy channel. The backstory is that Area 51 is allowing journalists into the facility under pressure to make it more transparent. Colonel Martin is put in charge of the journalists tour, and to make sure they don’t discover the actual aliens they have hidden in the depths of the facility. The opening scene should give you a clue about what to expect, as a news reporter delivers the film’s plot against a fairly bad green screen, and the group of journalists arrive at the facility. They are met by Colonel Martin, the man in charge of making sure that the journalists don’t see the actual secret stuff, like the aliens locked up in the lower levels. As it just so happens, while the tour is commencing, one of the aliens manages to break out, and the tour is trapped within the facility’s lockdown, while the soldiers have to find a way to stop the aliens from escaping. The alien that first escapes is a shapeshifter that can imitate any living organism it touches. So, as you might expect, this film just goes the direction of The Thing, as the humans try and work out who the shapeshifter is. There’s also some other aliens, such as an invisible one, and a friendly alien with telekinesis, and the film spreads itself a little thin between all these different creatures and scenarios, thus unable to make a tense atmosphere with a bit more focus.

Given that this is a Syfy TV movie, you are going to expect a certain low budget affair with mediocre acting and a lack of originality, and in this sense, it certainly delivers. The big issue with the film is that it is so disparate and lacking in focus that it is hard to keep your attention on it. The film shifts between the different characters constantly, and the different aliens with different abilities makes it difficult to maintain a consistent horror tone. Apart from the main characters trapped below ground, the focus periodically shifts to above ground, where a pair of soldiers just discuss…anything really. The scenes of inane dialogue are obviously meant to stretch out the runtime to ninety minutes, which it does, but completely throws off any sense of pacing. We get brief insights into the characters and their backstories, but this set up never goes anywhere. The aliens themselves have some effort put into making them look alien, but their movement is very awkward and stunted. All in all, there’s not much else to say about 51, it’s what you would expect from a Syfy TV movie in most aspects, but made worse by horrendous pacing and a severe lack of focus that is unable to generate the necessary atmosphere for a horror film.