beastboy-03509 I like to watch these kinds of films. I don't consider myself a filmophile or a movie buff. My movie shelf would have Troll, The Critters Anthology, the Leprechaun anthology, most of the Ernest movies, Rock and Rule, Gremlins, &c. I struggled with this film. It was boring. And the actors were not very convincing. David ran into a shell shocked man walking down the road. It seemed to contrived to be believable. The crazy farmer guy forgot to lock the back door? Okay, maybe he is a veteran with a head injury that affects his short term memory. I doubt it. The first thing any back country, good ole boy would do is load his arsenal, pick his favorite firearm and sidearm and knife and backup pistol and then bolt down the house. Why do writers do such lazy things? There were probably lots of budget restraints. One suggestion is very simple. The farmer could say "Oh no. It busted the lock on the back door!". The same thing happened in "Aliens. The survivors forgot to seal the ceiling ducts alongside all the other barricades. You would think Ripley would have had some idea about that from being on starships with labyrinthine corridors and space age tubes (Um, a pipe? Yeah, one of those). But that was a more believable mistake. Maybe the back door bit was a big joke on set? The movie does a decent job of showing David's humanity as he longs to see his wife. I find it funny that Mormon Salt Lake is almost completely overrun by the "Enemy Mine" knockoff aliens. Alien invasion is probably not on the list of things to prepare for as a good Mormon. The scene where David runs towards his wife while people run away and marines fight the aliens is so unbelievable. There aren't that many black people in Salt Lake City in such close proximity. The casting person should have gotten some Pacific islanders for that part. Oh wait. The extras were running in terror with blank expressions on their face. Nope. That wouldn't have worked either.The end running scene was comical. No human soldiers fired a single shot but a guy was reloading for like 45 seconds. All the running extras did not like scared for their lives. They had a "light jogging" face. I know i am joking about the movie. I get it's tough to make a film. It's a lot of work. The writer tried to go for the human angle instead of the big picture. The problem is that there needed to be more big picture to develop the world. David did not once ask the road crew or soldiers why all the roads were blocked (I don't remember him doing that). Anyone experiencing that would ask that question. The scope of the film failed to portray an alien invasion. This movie made David look like a self-absorbed person who doesn't really care about the world outside of his problems. People were dying around him and all he could think about was finding his cheating wife. The movie's thumbnail shows a gunner shooting a 240 out the back of a Chinook. That never happened. What did anything in the movie have to do with the name "Alienate"? Was it because David was alienated from the chaos around him? Or maybe Alienate is a verb and used in the same context as "Inseminate". The aliens "alienated" the planet when they invaded.I give this film an A for effort... but a C+ for application. There are better films out there. Only watch this if You are a die-hard alien invasion fan.

keith-774 With scenes lifted from "Signs" and Tom Cruise's "War of the Worlds," editing so choppy that I couldn't always tell what time line was being presented (and I understood "Primer." Hint: copying the editing style of "Lost" without actually understanding why they did it won't make a good movie), a cultural view of relationships and marriage that only Millenials who thought "90210" represented real life would believe, and what appears to be a sincere desire on the director's part to tell two stories, I simply cannot recommend this movie.I was once a micro publisher and we regularly received books for review that wanted to tell one story, but thought that telling another story would make it successful. In every case, the story the author wanted to tell was a human drama story (the heartache of affairs, lost love, yadda, yadda, yadda), but they knew that other stories were much more popular. So they would couch the story they wanted to tell in another story: time travel (often civil war romance), westerns, vampires, etc. The result was always a terrible story, and this is no different. Which is a shame, because the special effects where better than average for a low-budget flick and the acting wasn't bad for a bunch of new-comers.Unfortunately, the biggest problem in the flick (ok, the second biggest, it was SLOW) is that the director actually thinks 20-somethings experience life-altering moral issues. At 50+ it's actually quite tedious to see 20-somethings bemoaning how their lives are over and they're all alone. Kids that haven't actually experienced a lot of real life - and yet that was the story the director wanted to tell. Which, once again, is too bad because the alien story was actually quite well presented. (Well, except for the rifle. A bit too obvious as a plastic toy. Guys, you should have at least glued, sanded, and painted the plastic seam. I'm just sayin'.)So, end result, not a movie I can recommend.

karen-821-938620 Initially we were looking for a mindless film to zone out on. When we realized it was using multiple timelines, we were prepared to be irritated, but it was still easy to follow, because the jumps correspond to memories and realizations or show simultaneous events that then blend through the use of cell phones. Coincidentally, we saw it the night before the Las Vegas shootings, and it served as a kind of prep for the issue of the relative horrors of dieing alone or dieing with everyone else, flight to safety, risking youself to help someone else. This is an almost boringly naturalistic film that is very focused on the nature of marital relationships and the fear of death, which seems to have disappointed a lot of people. It breaks a number of conventional rules of the genre with realism. If you want to watch a film that makes you think you could easily survive an alien invasion and it would be fun, watch something else.

Kara Mitros I do not understand the negative reviews. This movie is not about aliens and invasion and big explosions. It uses these themes to deal with a much more down to earth issue which is 'alienation' in erotic relationships. This should be clear to even the most naive viewers.Acting is good and character development very good. Montage is different than in the usual Hollywood flick which makes the story not so linear but that is a good thing as it is used in a nice way to keep the story up. There is tension building like in any nice thriller but it is more of an internal one as we descent into the troubles of marriage and ambition. External tension is following the same arc beautifully.For an Indy film this was stellar and for a change there is a film with actually a little bit of meaning in it. If you want your 100th movie about aliens and explosions and heroics please move on. If you want something deeper definitely see this one.