Altered (2006 film)

"Uglier than I remembered." - Duke

Like The Return, I went into this film with no preconceived notions over any aspect of it.  I don't even remember seeing a preview for it!  It was included in a movie 4-pack along with the previous three movies, and so I decided to work all four into the month.  With this one, I was rather pleasantly surprised.

The film opens with three friends driving through the woods.  They get out of the van and start hunting something in the forest that also seems to be hunting them.  One of the friends, Cody, gets caught in a bear trap about the same time that the creature, an alien, does the same.  Firing his harpoon gun and missing, Cody tries to reload as the alien breaks free of the bear trap and starts to charge him... falling into a pit trap.  Their quarry captured, the three friends take it to the one person who knows more than anyone about the aliens, their old friend, Wyatt.  This leads into a night of terror with the seemingly captive alien soon proving to be not so helpless.

I really enjoyed this one.  The cast worked well together, playing off each other, the alien looked properly menacing, the blood effects were good, and the film felt properly intense.  Viewers who can't handle a lot of gruesome visuals should be warned, there's a game of intestinal tug-of-war at one point that even had me wincing!

Adam Kaufman played Wyatt, the expert who'd had more involvement with the aliens previously than any of the others.  He was also on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Parker Abrams and also on Steven Spielberg's alien abduction series Taken.  NFL player Brad William Henke played Duke, my favorite of the three who caught the alien.  He also played on Dexter and LOST.  Michael C. Williams played Otis, the more weak-willed of the trio.  He was also in The Blair Witch Project.  Joe Unger has a cameo as Mr. Towner, Cody's father.  He was also in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (which I covered last year), Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and Escape from New York.

The film was originally envisioned as a comic take of revenge on abducting aliens in the vein of Sam Raimi and Troma Films named Probed, but decided a horror-comedy might not sell so well.  While I'm curious how the original take would have been, I did like this one enough to give it a 5 out of 5.  And so, until next time, when we start the Week of Wax, this is Red Hawk signing out!