Director Simon Cox
Starring Simon Haycock, Lucy Drive, Julie Hoult, Danny Steele, Sophie Anderson
Rated M
Score 5/6

After the death of his young daughter, Thomas Dunn is a man who has lost his faith. On the day he finds out his wife is pregnant again, aliens invade the Earth.

As much as we might hate to admit it Humans are stubborn, brutish and scared of things and people they don’t understand. One of the stranger openings to one of my reviews but it seems relevant. I certainly wasn’t expecting the religious themes of Invasion Planet Earth, but this certainly isn’t the type of me that is going to hit you over the head with religion for ninety minutes.

One of the biggest complains about this movie could possibly be that the special effects are not as polished as other science fiction movies that have been released in recent years. Well of course they are not going to have the same effects budgets. Going by Invasion Planet Earth’s opening sequence which is an homage to cheesy science fiction television should have been enough of a tell in the direction movie was headed. I felt that I probably should have watched some of the scenes in space on a bigger screen then I did just to give them a little more impact, especially the shots of earth in the final act of the movie. The designs for the spaceships certainly seemed unique to me though their onscreen look gave me the vibe that they could have been more at home in sci-fi television series from the 90’s. On a side I will admit that I did not spot a lot of the hidden sci-fi references, but I will admit to having watched my share of bad genre television in the past.

I really wasn’t that familiar with anybody cast in the movie, I particularly enjoyed both Danny Steele (even if his character Floyd had a rather cliched moment with a piece of alien technology) and Sophie Anderson’s performances. I also thought that the scenes on the alien planet needed a bigger screen to watch them. The direction that battle sequence was taken (the scenes where shot in Birmingham) shows just how big the between a English movie and a Hollywood movie. If Invasion Planet Earth had of been a ‘Hollywood’ movie this battle sequence would have been bigger and louder.