Bullet Points: Creature aka Alien Lockdown (2004)

I make it a point to watch as many movies that knock off the great ones as possible. Not everyone can have a big budget or a list of name actors to be in their films so we have to appreciate when a film can make something special with less. Two films that are firmly in my Top 10 All Time are Predator and Aliens, and they have as many knock offs as any film out there. It may take me a lifetime to see them all but I’ll do my best…

• The Back Story: A narration opens the film and tells us that thousands of years ago a meteor landed on Earth. Humans were dumbfounded by it and claimed it to be all sorts of shit but in the end, there was a stone inside called the ‘Morningstone’ that somehow granted the person super duper power. Civilizations fought over the stone for centuries until it was lost to both man and history. Thanks goodness… I bet folks stopped fighting after it was gone!
• Follow the Science: Flash forward to present day and some dudes found the stone. They’re now doing the totally logical thing and studying it. Not only that, there is an alien creature laying on a surgical table while bio-suited scientists talk about how unstoppable it is. “If only we could control it for military use”, they say. Sure, buddy. Like that would ever work. The creature eventually wakes up and turns everyone in the room into leftover lasagna on the walls and floors. All except for our new friend Dr. Woodman (John Savage).

• Send in the Team: Our government is always on the lookout for ways to ruin things for the rest of humanity so they send in a crack military team made up of Talon (Michelle Goh) and a bunch of other guys that I didn’t remember the names of. Don’t worry, they won’t live till the end anyways. Talon, however, is the leader of the outfit and after a briefing with General Ansel (Martin Kove in a small role) she gets her team on board a chopper and out to the Black Site where the nefarious goings ons were going on.
• Shoot, Move, Communicate: You can pretty much expect that any movie like this is going to rip off the relationships of the soldiers in both Predator and Aliens. Those two movies are nearly perfect in my estimation, and even a sliver of similarities brought into a film like this is a positive. To my great surprise, however, Creature doesn’t steal that much from those films. It spends a few minutes here and there getting over the idea of a chain of command and that all but one member of the team had been together for some time. Well done! They also move and operate surprisingly well for a movie that I kept expecting to suck at any moment.

• Meet Legion: What a good lookin’ kid, huh? This angry little guy is named Legion by our buddy Dr. Woodman and goes about killing as many people as he can get his hands on. Talon and her team find Woodman and Charlie (James Marshall) the tech guy hidden in a room and end up running around with them for most of the film. Charlie turns out to be much more useful than Woodman since he is batshit crazy and disappears on them at the first possible moment.
• Blood and Bones: Make sure those guys pack a bodybag in their gear. That should have been on a sticky note attached to the orders when they sent in this spec ops team. Movies like this always “job out” special operations teams and Creature is no different. Sure, they don’t act like a bunch of jabronies when they are walking around but once Legion (dumb name) starts biting people’s arms off and ripping hearts out then they die just like the rest of us. It’s too bad that there wasn’t a few of them that really put up a good fight.

• The Good Doctor: I already mentioned that Dr. Woodman sucks and is insane. He runs off from the group and starts hanging out with his creature buddy. One good thing about this film over many others of its ilk is that Creature gives us plenty of good looks at Legion throughout the film. It’s one of the best things about the movie, to be honest, and the good effects don’t stop there. While Legion is a shitty name, he does look cool and is all about slaughtering people in graphic ways. That makes for a few bloody scenes that are super useful when the facility is so grey and drab.
• Climax: Like all the other knock offs, this creature/alien movie must have the final showdown between the beast and the hero. Talon is smart enough to lure Legion to where she stands a chance but the finish is nowhere near as cool as when Arnold and Sigourney made their stands. I wish I could say that James Marshall dusted off his old boxing skills from Gladiator and threw hands with the thing but that isn’t the case. Instead, we’re left with a really lazy finish that left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The Verdict: There is a long list of movies that try their damnedest to be Predator or Aliens and you can add Creature to that list. There is a much shorter list of movies that are decent in their attempt and I think this one deserves such a spot. It doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary or attempt to break new ground but it doesn’t screw anything up during its sub-90 minute runtime either. The creature effects and gore looked miles better than most movies with this budget and there wasn’t the usual annoying dialogue or wasted moments developing characters that will obviously not make it. The stale finish hurt it overall but as a knockoff it’s as good as you could hope for. Fans of Aliens and Predator should tune in because they just may enjoy parts of this one.