User Reviews

They Are Among Us is set in the small American town of Point Ridge where your average American teenager Daniel (Michael DiLallo) lives at home with his mum Collette (Anne Apra) & dad Hugh (Bruce Boxleitner) & generally does what the teenage youth of America do. However Daniel's 18th birthday is fast approaching & his parents are acting strangely, they have always guarded a box & Daniel is interested what's inside so along with his mates Harlan (Michael maples) & Devon (Lacey Beeman) he steals the box & has a look inside where he finds some strange feeling paper with some unknown symbols on it. Daniel's parents continue to act odd & he is convinced something is going on, the three friends then meet a woman named Finley (Alison Eastwood) who claims that their town is in fact a colony of aliens who use the skills of crooked plastic surgeon Norbert (Corbin Bernsen) to help them retain a human appearance & that Daniel's mum is in fact one of these aliens. As you would expect the news that his mum is an alien comes as somewhat of a shock but after seeing proof he sets about putting an end to the aliens before they contaminate the whole Earth...

Co-produced & directed by Jeffrey Obrow I thought They Are Among Us was average at best. The script by Lars Hauglie takes itself extremely seriously & is badly structured. For the first 45 minutes They Are Among Us tries to be a mystery & build up to the shocking revelation that aliens are among us, unfortunately the narrative is poor & unlike any good mystery there is nothing within that opening 45 minutes to hold your interest to hook you or engage. Sure there's a couple of brief scenes with an alien in them but apart from that I found it both dull & forgettable. While watching They Are Among Us I was thinking that it could be some nightmarish mutant offspring of a cheap rejected episode of The X-Files (1993 - 2002), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either the 1956 one or the 1978 remake) & Dawson's Creek (1998 - 2003). The character's are poor, the dialogue is poor & there's not one single surprise within the entire film while the ending leaves everything wide open & doesn't really resolve anything. Having said that it's reasonably well paced & might pass 100 odd minutes painlessly enough if your not too demanding. Oh, & one more thing for those that have seen it you'll know what I'm talking about but what the hell happened to the missing friend Langford (Garikayi Mutambirwa)? One minute he seemed vital to the plot & the next poof he's never seen, heard or mentioned again!

Director Obrow films like an episode from a TV show which comes as no surprise since it was made-for-TV. The whole thing looks flat, unadventurous & utterly forgettable. The special effects are few & far between, there's basically a couple of aliens & it's just some guy with sharp teeth & funny coloured skin while at the end for some reason that is never really explained there's big alien that appears from nowhere & then just disappears into thin air. Forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any. There's no tension or atmosphere & there's definitely no scares while the main villain is some old geezer with bad hair.

Technically They Are Among Us is reasonable, it's quite well made but it's all rather average. The acting wasn't great & I'm sure some of the cast were chosen for their looks rather than their acting skill of which they have little.

They Are Among Us is nothing special, it didn't do much for me although at least I watched it to the end with having to use the fast forward button on my remote. Not recommended.

Words fail me.

And that isn't common.

Done properly this could have been great, funny spoof B-movie sci-fi, but sadly, it was not to be. Rarely in the field of drama have so many competent actors struggled so vainly with such a dogs-breakfast of a script. I can only endorse the previous reviewer's comments - go clean the bathroom. In fact do ANYTHING except watch this film.

Positives: Lucy Beeman's nose. Negatives: Everything else.

Most apposite line: "This isn't going anywhere".

If only every plastic surgeon could meet with such a fate.

Well, they got a washed up star from Babylon 5 AND a washed up star from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as the parents of the alien hybrid kid who is worshiped by a cult of aliens who are here for some reason, but honestly, it was all convoluted. And there are about three times where you think Boxleitner got killed before they actually bothered to kill him.

Bruce, bud, that's your career dying... Babylon 5 was the high point.

The rest of it is some minor actors actually carrying the weight while the real actors do forced cameos while waiting for their paychecks to clear. Or something.

"They Are Among Us" is a spectacularly decent killer alien film.

**SPOILERS**

Living in a small town, friends Daniel, (Michael DiLallo) Devon, (Lacey Beeman) and Harlan, (Michael Maples) are growing concerned over the growing number of strange disappearances their friends are experiencing. Thinking that there's something his parents Hugh, (Bruce Boxleitner) and Colette, (Nana Visitor) are hiding, they find a strange medallion hidden away, and after a few attempts at tracking down the truth, stumble across a plot from a group of alien insects. Investigating more with Sammy Finley, (Alison Eastwood) they find that it is a parasitic race of creatures that need human collagen to survive, and is being held down in a conspiracy by Ralph Parks, (Diedre Madsen) June Jarrett, (Hunter Tylo) and Dr. Norbert, (Corbin Bernsen) prominent members of town and race to stop them from unleashing their deadly plans.

The Good News: This here was a somewhat decent killer alien film. That the aliens themselves, in the few scenes of them seen, are really nice and one of those points. They're tall, lanky, scaly and dripping with claws and fangs, together with their domestic look and demeanor make for a really great creature. Along with the rare on-screen appearances of them in total, it leads to some really impressive scenes with them. They are most apparent in the finale, which is really fun. From the prevalent windstorm to the creepy locations, which set-up a nice atmosphere, this one has a really creepy air at times. The beginning in the film, where there's a really nice mystery built-up, also works for this. From the mystery about the missing teenagers to the evidence of the parents being involved in something, there's some pretty decent scenes from these parts as it's all done to make the other parts feel that much creepier since it's backed behind the other parts in the film setting it up nicely. There's also a couple of really well-done scenes which are really great. The party scene at the house is awesome, taking the simple concept it presents in theory and offering a superb twist when, down in the basement with the strobe-light in full effect, it offers up the sacrifice scene and is even better for it. There's also all the good stuff from being in the underground caves, which always produce some good scenes. Anytime down in there is really good and satisfies with their inclusion. The last good thing about this one was the acceptably-sized body count, which had some okay deaths if not anything new or standout-ish, but the quantity here takes precedence. These here are the film's good points.

The Bad News: There wasn't a huge flaw to this one, though there is a lot of damage caused by it. The biggest issue is that the film has nearly way too much plot going on, as, entertaining as the mystery is, throws in way too many parts and ideas into it that there's simply overkill at a point. There's the fact that the aliens are involved with the crop-circles and medallion as well as the effects of the collagen works well, since they are presented in logic, accurate and believable manners, and this would've been well and good except for the fact that there's the inclusion of the parasite angle. They were terrible enough, but rather than doing anything good about it, this one has the effects of the parasite go indirect opposition of the alien angle. It's almost as though it was thrown in merely to add a twist to the film and make the creatures feel threatening. It all just feels tacked on instead, and then comes the big sequence where it's supposedly mushed together with the other elements but catastrophically fails, making the whole thing more complicating and headache-inducing than necessary. This also brings up the film's other real flaw, the slow pace at the beginning since its got the different stories woven together. Nothing really happens until the end, and the set-up for this is a little lacking. These here really hurt the film.

The Final Verdict: This here wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that great either and had a few problems with it that really lower this one. Really only give this entry a chance if you're into these kinds of creature features or are in the mood for cheesy, harmless fun, otherwise heed caution.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and a clothed sex scene

I watched this the other night and it was just okay. I wouldn't watch it again most likely. At first the acting was a little weak (like watching an amateur student film or something), but it got better as the movie went along. I really liked Michael Maples (Harlan) performance the best of the unknown teens in the movie. Liked the Old Chuck character too.

During Hunter Tylo's first scene, she was in bed with a guy and I laughed out loud when I realized that it was her real life husband. Of course his scene was very short LOL.

There were a couple of things that didn't make sense or weren't explained in the movie though.

When Harlan confronts Tylo's character, she tries to seduce him and says she's going to eat him up (which is what she apparently did to the first guy it showed her in bed with, though it didn't show that, it just showed them in bed and then the camera panned out of the bedroom and you hear the guy scream and you hear kind of a crunching sound), but he has her number (he knows what she is in other words) and he tells her to stay away from him and he calls her an "alien wh*re". She tells him to keep his mouth shut and just look pretty. It fades to another scene with other characters. Next time it shows Harlan, it appears that he's been taken over by one of the alien parasites. Later, we find out he was pretending to be one of the aliens. It didn't make sense why the female alien character didn't kill him like she did the other guy. They didn't explain it at all. They just left you wondering. That was pretty stupid and a big whole in the story on the part of the writers.

The giant alien creature in the movie was pretty goofy looking for a movie anyway. It looked like something that would appear on an episode of "Buffy" or "Angel". It wasn't as bad as something that might have appeared on a "Hercules" episode (like that stupid giant rooster or the muck monsters/creatures that Autolycus and Iolaus turned into in that same episode).

The form of the aliens before they took on a human host weren't too bad looking though.

There are plot holes and some bad dialogue and the ending is kind of blah, but overall, it's all right for one viewing, especially if you're bored. You're not missing much if you skip the movie, but if you tape it off of sci-fi and then watch it later and fast forward through the commercials and some of the more slower scenes, it's over quickly enough that you're not wasting too much of your time. I started it at like 2am and was finished before 330 am.