Lifeform (1996)

Sort of a poor man's Alien, with an insect-like alien from Mars (or recently hanging out there, if not from there) arriving on Earth with lots of special effects methylcellulose and rather irksome parthenogenesis.While clearly this was movie shot on a budget, they did okay at having lots of nervous military guys running down dark hallways terrified of where the monster might be. In this, it very much used Alien's techniques.I did some eye-rolling at the cliché of the military guy coming in and taking over, at the alien's ability to tap right into earth computers, and so on--but that's nothing worse than you'd see in big-budget s-f movies.What was above average: First, the score, by Kevin Kiner, which elevated the tension levels nicely, and the script detail that we never did know if the alien was evil, invading, nice, curious, lost, confused, or what. You know, if this sort of event did happen, we'd be just as clueless about its intentions.(As it ends up, the biologist could have skipped the appendectomy and stayed part of the main plot.)

It was a low budget film people! But it has a great story. Even the alien is more believable then the big budget crap we get now days. The actors were not the best, but again, low budget. I thought even they did a great job considering what they had to work with. Its an independent film remember. If we would support stuff like this there would be better scifi out there.Look at it this way when you watch it. It was someone with little money trying to put a great idea on film. I'm sure if given a 200 million dollar budget it would have been fantastic!Okay, so here goes, the acting I give a 6 plus, the story a 10, the production with budget considered a 10. Try to watch the story and not be too hard on the films special FX. It isn't easy to create a monster on the screen (alien, wolfman etc.) Not everyone can afford the big time SFX companies or the computer time to make it work.

Lifeform (AKA Invader) 1996 RThis film is about a team of scientists and military yahoos that end up fighting an alien creature. It's that simple. It's yet another film like Alien or Leviathan (which itself was a direct rip-off of Alien) or Species. In this one, intelligent life that reproduces asexually sends a Viking probe back from Mars (because Mars is new territory in the world of alien encounters you know), and that probe has been modified to carry this creature along with it. Of course, the alien gets out and gets hunted and gets killed. Overall, the acting isn't too bad, and the special effects are competent. The alien is intelligent, so of course, the one woman in the film feels sorry for it. The design of the alien itself is kind of like those half-human, half-horse creatures. You know, a centaur. It looks all terrifying on the outside, but then it extends it's little alien body up (the part where the human part of the centaur goes) out of the normal trunk (the part that is the horse), and it looks all benevolent. The military base they're on is rather bland, and of course, Big Brother shows up and spoils the show. The Army folks saunter about trying to kill the alien and they're all afraid it may have some contagion that it's spreading around.The atmosphere isn't bad, but the film is somewhat shallow—it's just a straight-forward science fiction/horror flick with some decent gore and a humorous kill (guy is stabbed with the blunt end of an M-16). Nothing really special, but nothing really horrible. Recommended to hardcore SF/horror buffs. And that's about it.5/10

"Lifeform" would have been a solid 30- or 60-minute episode of "Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits." It takes the "Alien" theme and throws a few twists in it, such as, do we really know what the alien wants? or is the alien trying to kill us or is it scared and trying to protect itself FROM us? The problem is, it's a full-length feature movie. Thus, we have to sit around and twiddle out thumbs while the director comes up with scene after scene of boring filler. When they're not taking 15 minutes to explain something that should only take 30 seconds, they're giving a young Ryan Phillippe plenty of meaningless face time. The military grunts come across as Keystone Kops quality. If that's our finest, this country is in really sad shape. There are also too few scenes with the alien. A potentially good movie became way too pedestrian. I'm giving this a 3 out of 10.