EXTRATERRESTRIAL – Fantastic Fest Review

True science-fiction involves real science, either existing or theoretical, used to tell a fictional story, preferably with an underlying message or philosophical point-of-view. Now, clearly, this is not always the case, but simply sticking a massive, mostly static flying saucer into the skyline like an animated matte painting (as can be seen in the promotional stills and trailer) does not make a film science-fiction. You may have already guessed it, but I am talking about EXTRATERRESTRIAL.

If this isn’t a science-fiction film, what is writer/director Nacho Vigalondo’s film all about? The back story of EXTRATERRESTRIAL implies, briefly, that an alien invasion has occurred. Julio (Julian Villagran) awakes in a flat not his own after a long night of hard partying. He realizes this is the home of the attractive Julia (Michelle Jenner) with whom he spent the night, although they both have difficulty recalling all the details. Immediately, Julia seems uneasy about something and we would assume she has no interest in a continuation of whatever occurred the night before… until she and Julio spot the massive 4-mile wide spaceship hovering over their city.

Some time is spent on Julia and Julio trying to piece together what happened, and where the inhabitants of a now nearly abandoned city have gone, but this conversation quickly dissolves into a character study revolving around an unclear night shared by the two main characters. One way to describe EXTRATERRESTRIAL would be to call it a darkly comic romance, without much of the romance and all of the dysfunctional relationship checkpoints. The somewhat soap operatic drama of this intensifies and becomes even more bizarre once Julia’s stalker neighbor Angel (Carlos Areces) enters the story, as well as Julia’s previously unmentioned boyfriend Carlos (Raul Cimas) with whom she also has a less than perfect relationship.

At this point, EXTRATERRESTRIAL begins to get silly, even absurdly nonsensical. At times playing out like a farce of later Hitchcock films such as A FAMILY PLOT, the mystery is overshadowed by the lack of clarity in what kind of story is being told. Carlos proceeds to apparently lose his mind, while no explanations are ever presented as to why the characters are having difficulty remembering details of what they’ve said and done. Likewise, the lingering questions about the aliens are screaming in the backs of our heads, clawing at our skulls to be heard, and more importantly, to be answered.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL is shot almost entirely in a single location, in and around Julia’s apartment building. The intimacy of the setting could have played gloriously for such a tightly confined science-fiction concept, if only that had been the movie made. Instead, the lack of varied scenery and thematic intrigue leaves the film dull and monotonous for most of the running time, despite some moments of humor snuck into the four-way interpersonal paranoia.