Amph Ladies and Gentlemen: I Give You The Throwaway Low Budget Urban Alien Invasion Movie

We have a clear subgenre now, launched by Cloverfield in 2008, the reality show, shaky cam, low budget, urban assault alien invasion film.

The advantages: spend less than $50 million to make it, often half that or less
how to know you've bought tickets to see one: shaky cam, takes place in a big city, a signature special effect/creature, "found footage", you've never heard of anyone in the cast
the disadvantages: typically mauled by critics
Why you keep seeing this movie over and over: - they make money!

Cloverfield

- RT score: 77% - the only well-reviewed one of the bunch
- budget: $25 million
- ww box office: $170 million (nearly 7x budget)

Skyline

- RT score: 16%
- budget: $10 million
- ww box office: $60 million (6x budget)

Battle: Los Angeles

- RT score: 35%
- budget: $70 million
- ww box office: $211 million (3x budget)

The Darkest Hour

- RT score: 16%
- budget: $30 million
- ww box office: $5 million...

Looks like The Darkest Hour could be the first moneyloser of the subgenre. I don't think one $30 million loser (could still make back its investment on rentals) is enough to kill it off, but we can hope. The lessons studios will likely take away from The Darkest Hour is: it must be set in an American city!

 

I haven't seen The Darkest Hour yet, but I thought both Cloverfield and Skyline were terrible. Battle: Los Angelas surprised me by being not only watchable but very enjoyable, but it comes across as more of a recruitment campaign for the armed forces than as a thoughtful science fiction flick.

Also, as for "never heard of anyone in the cast," -- I've heard of at least a handful of the actors in Battle: LA, the protagonist from Skyline, one of the women from Cloverfield and the top 3 billed in The Darkest Hour. Maybe that says more about me than about these movies, though.

Another film that fits at least most of your criteria is Attack the Block, which is good fun.

 

I like Cloverfield quite a bit. Everyone seems to complain about how unlikable the characters are... so did they miss the part where horrible horrible terror is visited upon them?

Even Barry Levinson is making one of these, as it turns out. Don't know when it'll see the light of day, but it's produced by the Skyline muppets.

 

I thought Battle: Los Angeles was pretty silly to the point of being bad. It's a clumsy attempt at allegory for Iraq, and as I am in the Army, the goofy armed services stereotypes (Marines: Almost all Aryan males, Army soldiers: black males, etc) irritated me deeply.

I'm not sure Cloverfield counts as an alien movie-was it ever specified that Clover was actually an alien?

 

Interesting, isn't it? Filmmakers have spent the last 70 years over-reporting their production overhead, marketing and distribution
costs so they avoid paying anyone naive enough to take monkey points; now some are under-reporting their costs, at least publicly,
to exploit the "low budget" phenomenon.

 

This is not a new phenomenon; horror flicks are based on the same idea. They commonly make $30,000,000.00 in N. America--two weeks on and out--so all you need to do is hire unknowns, keep the costs down, and you'll make money.

 

I'm not sure Cloverfield counts as an alien movie-was it ever specified that Clover was actually an alien?

Yes, there's a silly postcript scene of the main couple enjoying a day together before the event, you can see an object falling into the ocean - presumably the meteor or craft that brought the Cloverfield monster.

 

Apparently that's a Japanese satellite, and JJ Abrams has denied that it's an alien:

Cloverfield wikia


I'd still group it in with these other films, though; the similarities are obvious.

 

I just put the Darkest Hour trailer up in the Trailer Park, which is the first time I'd seen it.
I was not impressed. "Throwaway" is the correct word.

 

Has anyone seen the Battleship trailer? That definitely looks like a variation on the Cloverfield theme.

Today also seems like a good day to give a shout out to the found footage + [insert genre] genre

Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities gave us the paradigmatic found footage + horror movie.

Cloverfield gave us the found footage + monster movie.

Now we have the found footage + superhero movie in Chronicle. It's getting pretty good reviews too!!! This is something I'd consider going to see in the theater. Haven't been to the movies since Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/

We're missing found footage + end of the world disaster movie and found footage + high school romantic comedy, and found footage + teen angst vampire movie.

Is one of those alien invasion flicks a + found footage? I can't remember.

 

Apollo 18 might fit the bill -- haven't seen it yet, though.

 

Apparently it's also pretty terrible.

 

Apollo 18 was OK, better than Darkest Hour anyway. It was different, although not a great deal happened.

 

Yes sir. Not new by a long shot. Even when Corman gave it a name it was a 30 year old practice. The urban alien theme and the shaky cam did provide some freshness to the horror and sci-fi set but they arent exactly new either. Cloverfeld was well done but maybe we should acknowledge District 9 for being the modern classic that it is, with respect to this topic.

 

Of course. There are good versions.

 

District 9 is a classic of a different subgenre, one I'd group more with the Men In Black series and Alien Nation about the intersection of earth and ET cultures, not necessarily in the context of eradicating or enslaving the human race.

 

Can you give us a list of the subgenres, then?