LKMYNTS: Altered.

I always knew that rednecks would be the threat to the apocalypse...

I love finding little known movies that turn out to actually be good. It makes me feel that I'm actually a step ahead of the movie crowd for once. It's especially fun to find horror movies, because that's such a closely watched genre with such a huge fan base that it's nearly impossible for a gem to slip by unnoticed. So, needless to say, I was a bit wary going in to Altered, figuring it was probably pretty much crap. Boy, was I wrong.

The movie starts as 3 redneck friends--Cody (Paul McCarthy-Boyington), Duke (Brad William Henke), and Otis (Mike C. Williams)--are hunting something dangerous in the middle of the night. Well, it turns out to be an alien (the monstrous kind), as they had been abducted and tortured 15 years before, when the aliens killed their friend, Cody's brother Timmy. Once the alien is captured, they take it to the house of another childhood friend, Wyatt (Adam Kaufman), whose girlfriend Hope (Catherine Mangan) is also living with him. Now, Wyatt was Timmy's best friend, and after Timmy, Wyatt was the most experimented on... and he's immune to a lot of stuff the aliens throw at him, as well as having a few extra special abilities over the aliens. Unfortunately, as they soon start to discover, maybe the aliens didn't let one of their own get caught on accident... and they can't kill it, because that would begin the annihilation of human kind.

The best thing I can say about this movie is that it is incredibly original, especially for an alien-horror movie. Most of the time with aliens, you're dealing with some type of invasion or abduction or something like that. This is totally different. The abduction happened years before the movie starts, and the invasion is the threat if they're not careful. It's essentially a hostage movie, where the hostage is highly dangerous in numerous ways, and at least one of the hostage takers (the stereotypical, stupid, hot-headed redneck) is all about killing it right then and there.

The movie is incredibly tense, and it sets up the mood early on. The pacing is perfect, and it never lets you go once you've started. Everything takes place at night (except the very end), so everything it dark and mysterious, where creatures can jump out at you at any moment. The suspense level is pretty good. I'd also heard, before going in to this movie, that it was incredibly gory. So I'm watching and watching and there's no gore, and hardly even any blood and HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD. I'll just say 4 words: tug 'o war... intestines. That scene is hardcore crazy (and brilliant).

The acting, from what I read, was people's biggest complaint. But I didn't see any major issues with it. Granted, I had just come off of a week of straight Uwe Boll films, so anything could have looked Oscar-worthy in comparison. But still, the only one who really seemed to overact was Cody, playing a pretty roughneck kinda guy. Though he does, surprisingly, have a good moment near the end. Besides Cody, the characters were pretty likable, and they weren't your stereotypical rednecks. Again, that was pretty refreshing.

But there is some negative. First, the alien looks ridiculous. If you've ever seen Dragonball Z... essentially, the aliens are Saibamen. Seriously, I about burst out laughing when I realized the comparison. They're Saibamen with super-sharp teeth. Luckily, you don't have to deal with seeing it directly too often. The next big issue... Hope, the girlfriend. The character had potential, but was mainly used as somebody to whine and bitch. And then the ending comes, which doesn't make any sense character-wise, I don't think. But oh well. I heard the creators already have a couple sequel ideas, which they wrote up at the same time they created this one, and they sound pretty cool (expanding on the idea of Wyatt and his abilities to face off against the aliens).

There's really not much more to say. I forgot to mention that this movie was made by the same guy who directed The Blair Witch Project (don't worry, there's no real shaky cam). But that does explain the movie's ability to build suspense and keep it tense. I really recommend this movie if you're into horror or the alien subgenre. It's pretty original, at the least. And if you're a gore-hound, the aforementioned scene is awesome.


A Keanu 'Whoa'