Alien Domicile starts by drawing in the audience with Charles Darwin’s powerful words about evolution and natural selection, concluding with the statement: ‘The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.’ The viewer is then transported into a desert landscape captioned ‘Groom Lake, Nevada,’ which assumes we know this is the notorious Area 51.
According to UFO lore, this is where the US government is secretly amassing a collection of recovered alien spaceships and housing their injured occupants or the corpses of the deceased. In ‘Alien Domicile’, however, the alien roaming Groom Lake is very much alive and is involved in a gun battle with a Special Forces unit led by Master Sergeant Ryan Pierce, who is played by Michael Tushaus.
Following the opening battle, miles away in another part of the tunnel system underneath Area 51, Eduard Osipov’s Major Dimitri, Elly Brown’s Hanna, Michael Monteiro’s Russell Turner’s Michael Monteiro and Gail Sullivan played by Sabrina Cofield wake up in an empty room. The group of strangers do not know what is happening to them, but they soon discover the base has been evacuated and they are on their own to tackle whatever is lurking out there beyond the safety of those four walls.
The motley group argues about whether they should try to escape or not when they are joined by Master Sergeant Pierce, who appears to be the only remaining member of his Special Forces unit. He encourages them to leave the room, and although suspicious of his behaviour the foursome take Pierce’s advice.
There are brief flashbacks, hallucinations and glimpses of the alien who seems to want to take over their bodies or kill them, presumably in the interest of evolutionary selection. Unfortunately, most of the film consists of people cowering in fear inside rooms or running down corridors accompanied by the notes of dutifully suspenseful music. This theme of people being chased by aliens was far better articulated in the Alien and Predator franchises and adds very little of substance or even mere novelty to what we see on screen.
One of the greatest challenges in ‘Alien Domicile’ is that the characters themselves are neither engaging nor interesting. In fact, as an audience, we end up not really caring whether or not they are captured or killed by this alien.
It is only near the end of the film that we feel a bit of empathy with Hanna when what happened to her prior to arriving at the base is finally revealed to us. Even this clever plot twist does little to redeem the movie overall. The result is a technically well-made movie that lacks any narrative punch.
ALIEN DOMICILE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: KELLY SCHWARZE / STARRING: ELLY BROWN, EDUARD OSIPOV, MICHAEL MONTEIRO, SABRINA COFIELD, MICHAEL TUSHAUS / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 9TH
