Set in 1979, Ohio, a group of early teens sneak off to a old train depot to film their own low budget, zombie movie. Here the group play the only witness to a train crash, caused by a white van driving down the train line. When going to investigate, they are told to forget what they have seen otherwise they will be killed, along with their families.
In the following scenes, the teens begin to notice strange goings on, including all of the dogs in the town going missing and people disappearing. Meanwhile, the group continue to make their film and we see the two main characters, Joe Lamb and Alice Dainard, begin to fall for each other, much to the dismay of both of their fathers and friend, Charles. We learn that the tension between the Lamb and Dainard family stems from a previous accident where Deputy Lamb blames Alice’s father, Louis Dainard, for the death of his wife (we never find out exactly how she died).
The US Airforce takes over the investigation of the train crash and strange goings on in the town and their suspicious behaviour makes it clear that they know more than they are letting on.
The teens decide to take things into their own hands and try to determine what has been happening and how to sort it . They soon discover that aliens are behind the madness, who after several years of being on the recieving end of experiments, no longer trust humans.
Is it any good?
I found this film very slow to start and thought there was a lack of story line. There was no real build up or climax to the film....in the end the alien is just trying to rebuild its ship to go home (like ET...only bigger and angrier!). The film ends with the alien completing his ship and leaving in peace.
There was not much background information given to us to truly empathize with the characters and no storey lines were developed enough. In this type of film, I would usually expect the children to become the heros, which is the final asssumption but there is only a brief moment of understanding between the creature and Joe, which doesn’t really work.
I did however find the relationship between the two teens (Joe and Alice) believable. Both Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning (you may recognise her as the younger sister of Dakota Fanning) are very strong and portray their characters with realism and feeling. They are definitely worth looking out for in the future.
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