Paul Andrews The Dark Lurking is set in the future on a distant planet where the few remaining human survivors in Research Station 320 are fighting for their lives, a team of mercenaries lead by Michaels (co-producer Bret Kennedy) have already been sent in but they are unable to contain the situation. Scientific experiments have unleashed the ancient power of Satan, in an attempt to harness the power it has infected many of the crew & has turned them into flesh eating mutant creatures whose only aim is to kill. Michaels & his team find a few of the base crew hiding including research experiment Lena (Tonia Renee), they all decide to stand any chance of survival they must work together & work their way through the various levels to the surface & possible safety but with the flesh eating monsters around every corner & ammunition running out fast it won't be easy. As the group continue to make their way to the surface the true nature of the experiments & the true nature of Lena is revealed...This Australian production was edited, written, co-produced & directed by Greg Connors & is a blatant Aliens (1986) rip-off but is maybe one of the better ones out there, while it has it's problems I quite liked it overall. The Aliens similarities are plain to see, a small research colony on a distant planet, a team of armed soldiers sent in to rescue any survivors, the large amounts of monsters that make a straight forward escape impossible, the huge nuclear blast countdown at the end, the attempted repair of communication antenna, lots of crawling through tight air ducts, the siege by the monsters on the area where the survivors are hiding, the welding & barricading of doors, one of the group working against them & I was surprised not to see a little girl anywhere. While nowhere near as good as the classic Aliens this sci-fi monster film is a passable time waster, sure it's nothing original or particularly outstanding but it'll pass an hour & a half. The biggest problems with The Dark Lurking come from the script, the dialogue is very wooden & stiff with character's announcing what they are going to do & then just doing it, there's no character development here at all & none of them are given any background or any real personality. Then there's the constant wandering around in dark cramped locations, alright so that's what is expected in a film such as this but it gets tedious & with no great scheme or plan it's hard to get into the story as I wasn't sure what people were trying to do, where people were or even the scale of the colony. There's little perspective other than lots of dark corridors full of screeching creatures & little else going on besides until towards the end when the origin of the creatures is revealed & tensions between the survivors rise. Unfortunately again this tension is played very broadly, it's all out in the open too quickly & in the end doesn't amount to much.Surprisingly The Dark Lurking looks great, the special effects are great with some impressive spaceships & alien planet surface shots. The creatures are all practical make-up effects & there's no CGI effects which is great, there's plenty of proper slime & blood too. There's some good gore here from monsters eating intestines to a severed head with half is skin ripped off, heads are blown off, hands are ripped off, huge bites are taken out of people, there's plenty of shooting & fists are shoved through people's bodies & heads. There's more gore here than in the average recent low budget horror & it all looks very good. The claustrophobic sets looks good too, they have that futuristic yet gritty look with flashing lights, electronic doors & giant industrial & grating fans everywhere. In fact the production design reminds of Aliens a lot. The main problem with The Dark Lurking is that it's just too dark & the editing is a little quick fire at times, it becomes a bit of a dark mess where you struggle to make out any real detail. Shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen the photography is also nice & worth noting.With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 this looks a lot bigger budget, don't forget that just about everything had to be made from the futuristic sets to the costumes to the weapons to the creatures to the colony to the spaceships to the computer & laboratory equipment. The acting really lets the film down, along with the wooden dialogue the poor acting really kills the character's & any scene involving anyone talking becomes very difficult to watch.The Dark Lurking is an unashamed rip-off of Aliens & doesn't really try to be anything else, it's extremely well made with good monsters, gore & special effects but the wooden script, bad acting & lack of plot beyond a few people trying to survive a horde of monsters prevents me from saying it's anything more than merely watchable. To anyone who likes sci-fi monster films then The Dark Lurking is great, to anyone else maybe there isn't quite enough here overall.

davyd63 Though not perfect this film works. It has all the trademarks of a sci-fi horror film - gore, monsters, action scenes, gruesome endings for the various characters etc, etc. This was a first time for everyone involved in the making of this film, so if certain aspects are not quite right this will explain why. All the great directors and actors first films were highly questionable but with experience comes improvement as I am sure will happen for all those involved here. So, 10 out 10 to the people involved in this film for giving it a go and making the most of the limited resources on offer and making those work. I have read all the reviews relating to this film and whilst some were very helpful and positive, I am convinced that some of the negative ones were written by persons with a grudge against either the cast or crew or both. If not, my suggestion to those people would be to try directing, producing, scriptwriting and acting yourself, it is not always as easy as it appears.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Alright, first of all the movie was also known as "Alien vs Zombies". What was up with that? That title couldn't have been further from the truth. Okay, given there were some weird aliens in the movie, but zombies? Hardly qualified as zombies. They were mutants.The movie cover, at least the one on the Danish DVD release, looks so much like an actual Alien movie cover, that it should be illegal. But of course, that is done to lure people in, to sucker people into buying it. Which I did, of course.Let's get on to the movie. The storyline was actually good enough, though there were some obvious lacks here and there, and you also sat there after the movie ended with a thought like "why? why was this movie necessary?". There is a lot going on in the movie, but a lot of it actually doesn't come full circle, and just is left hanging there, hoping the audience will forget about it.In this movie "The Dark Lurking" you will find a lot of cliché stereotypical macho he-men running around, all of which oddly enough, have really low voices. I guess having a rough, low voice makes you more manly? And you don't really get any real introduction to the people in the movie and why they are there in the first place. And also, what was up with the multitude of different accents being present in the movie? It just added to the confusion.The acting was actually good enough, though the movie suffered from series of halting dialogue. At some points you just wanted to yank out hair at the root at some of the stuff people said.What worked best for me in this movie was the dark and brooding environment. The scenery was fantastic and there was a good sense of claustrophobia in the movie. And also there was a lot of action throughout the movie. And the special effects worked quite nicely as well.What didn't work for me was the alien lifeforms. Wow, that was so hilarious and so unimaginative. And you just got to love those oh-so-obviously-fake-plastic spikes that were protruding from its arm. And the "zombies" (as they want us to accept them as being), well they were somewhat of a lukewarm thrill. They were mutants, plain and simple. Mutated humans, not zombies! They had lots of blood splattered on them; nice! But they looked like something from a cheesy sci-fi movie gone bad.Actually I was sitting and waiting for Bruce Campbell to just pop out of nowhere and start kicking butt!In overall, this movie had some good elements, but it failed to punch through, and it ended up being a confusing, lukewarm experience that you would rather not have gone through.

trashgang The Dark Lurking, I never seen any review of it. While visiting a convention there was a shop with special editions of horror flicks, guess what, there was a hologram DVD cover of a movie called Alien vs Zombies. The cover looked great but it was stated uncut so I thought, is it something worth buying. I bought it and luckily didn't regret it. It isn't an original storyline. You can see samples from Pandorum, Alien and Resident Evil. The spaceship is indeed a look-a-like of the Nostromo, flashing lights and sound i mean, the leading lady is a bit of a Sigourney Weaver clone, as do her clothes. But no worry, it's indeed a good storyline, not only about zombies or carriers and aliens but there's something else going on, only revealed at the end. Sometimes it's a bit too much of zombie attacks. But when they attack or the aliens attack it's all about gore. Intestines flying around, heads being shot, you know what you will get when you are just starting to watch it. It never bored me. I definitely would classify it under science fiction horror. A must see.