If I have anything to blame for the headache I have as I write this, the blame falls squarely on Alien Abduction. Writer-director Eric Forsberg has made a sci-fi/horror flick that just tries way too hard to be surreal, off-kilter, and bizarre without realizing that even a movie that's a total "mind f*ck" (Pi comes to mind) has to have some coherency and actually not reek badly of cheapness.

Granted, The Asylum isn't a big-budget company - in fact they probably make their films with less money than the average Full Moon movie was made with - therefore the effects are fairly low-scale and the movie has a total B-movie look, which I can handle, but I'll be damned if I'm going to waste 96 minutes of my time (although I guess they tricked me, as I did!) on a movie that's unable to engage the viewer and is nothing more than a hard to watch mess.

Megan Lee Ethridge is our heroine who finds herself trapped in a top secret Government installation when she gets abducted by aliens while on a camping trip with her boyfriend and a couple of friends. Of course, lucky for her, this seems to be the most disorganized and poorly run government building is history as she's able to escape, pass herself off as an employee there, and basically go wherever she wants without question.

It's using this newfound freedom that she decides to try and figure out what happened to her and save her friends along the way. Did I mention that there are also some aliens and face-exploding leech-like creatures on hand in order for them to sling a whole slew of bloody effects?

Despite the fact Forsberg manages early on to almost pull of some of the "dreamlike" quality he brings to certain scenes and a few of the gore scenes aren't too bad, Alien Abduction just leaves a horrible taste in your mouth. Things just seem out of place throughout the entire movie, the acting rarely rises above amateurish (Ethridge does do okay in the lead, I admit), and it just seems it wants to be more than the budget could pull off.

Unfortunately, this joins Intermedio (also an Asylum release) as one of 2005's worst - which is too bad because the folks at Asylum have made some decent flicks in the past year such as Death Valley and, to a lesser extent, Evil Eyes.

Visit The Asylum for more info. (Chris Hartley, 6/04/05)

Directed By: Eric Forsberg.
Written By: Eric Forsberg.

Starring: Megan Lee Ethridge, Griff Feuerstein, Melanie Porter, Patrick Thomassie.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here is pretty clean and for the most part looks decent, though a few scenes seem to get a little bit fuzzy. Not pristine, but perfectly acceptable.

Extras: There's not much here for extras as we get a trailer (plus trailers for Jolly Roger, Death 4 Told, Intermedio, Ghost Of The Needle, and War Of The Worlds), a brief "making of" featurette, and a dull commentary track with Forsberg and 2nd Assistant Director/actor Charles Schneider (which is much too "way to go! we're great!" for my tastes).

An issue with this disc that's not a feature is the soundmix, it seems to phase in and out with one of two scenes losing sound completely.