Hay, you’ve got your Neil Breen mixed up with my Birdemic! Yeah, but you have your Birdemic mixed up in my Neil Breen! Two crappy stinkers cowbined into one! Lawrence Franzen‘s Alien Prophecy (aka The Oracle) from 2018 is a mumbling, stumbling, incowherent mishmash of a film, and is the sour subject of the latest episode of Indie Film Cafe – Moody found this dreck from udder a rock somewhere, and then co-opted both McKenzie Kelly and Ri’Maku to suffer through it: and of course, the MooCow had to watch it as well because what’s good for the goose is good for the…errr…cow. But believe me, folks, there ain’t a whole lot good about this film! Bad acting, poor FX, bad lighting, an incowprehensible story, and silly gadgets all cowbine to sink this stinker into the briney deep, where it no doubt belongs!
:=8/
Soooo…apparently there is this Hawaiian special forces guy who keeps getting washing up on deserted islands (“Again??!!”), and some alien fossils on the moon that explode, and a chick who does tai chi who has oracle powers, some sort of global conflict between different evil mercenary groups who have hired the likes of Genghis Khan and Hitler (“We forced Socrates to drink the hemlock!” – No, you really didn’t…), a very huggy chick in a railway station who will chase your ass thither and yon, A Haitian chick who works for the French secret agency, a snuggly Australian ninja with machine gun tubes sewed onto her gloves, a hit man and hit woman with machine gun pool sticks, and…well, just about everything else known to man.
Cow this all fits in together is just about anyone’s guess, and writer/director/cinematographer/producer/editor//visual fx generator/etc Lawrence Franzen is not gonna say, nope, nope, not even a little bit. Its one of those films you just have to tread water and hope yer on dry ground when it finally subsides; its a weird fever dream of a film which bombards you with too many ideas, none of which is thought through particularly well, and buries whatever interesting narrative there might have been had someone been there to say STAHHHP! FOCUS!!!
Cowbine all this with some very cheesy Birdemic-level FX, poorly choreographed fighting scenes, and ham-handed editing, and you have one weird, low throbbing headache of a film. There are some decent sets, a few decent locations, and some of the acting was pretty good (while some clearly not), but there is soo much bad that it easily overwhelms the few positives of the film. The udder IFC kids seemed to agree, with Moody awarding Alien Prophecy a full 10, while McKenzie chipped in a 9 and Ri’Maku gave a 9.5. That gives Alien Prophecy a total Stink Score of 28.5, and a Stinky Average of 9.5 – and that is pretty stinky! On the Ladder of Stink, Alien Prophecy is tied with some of the great classic stinkers of IFC, including Birdemic, Hard Rock Zombies, Blood Predator, and Creeping Terror!
Here is the trailer – good luck figuring it out. If you want a physical copy (and you should!), you can get it at Wally World, Barns & Noble, and Deep Discount.com. Or you can stream it on Tubi or Google Play. I cud not find any posters, tee shirts, mugs, or any udder merch for this flick, but then maybe you don’t wanna admit to the world that you love this moovie…
;=8)
Cud this be the worse alien moovie of the season? Well, just wait and see, ’cause here at Indie Film Cafe we’ve always got something worse waiting in the wings…
;=8)
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