Early Peter Jackson lunacy that drops you off in the middle of an alien invasion, which looks much more like a modern zombie pic, in small town New Zealand. Apparently, the aliens have decided people are good to eat, and from the looks of it, they already ate all the women. There’re no ladies in this film, at all. What we get is mostly a group of NZ bros trying to fight and escape the zombie/aliens who pop out of barns, and outhouses, and create lots of opportunity for gore shots.

The gore is the major star here. The filmmakers do not chinse on the goopy death and torment, and vomit, and other visceral gags. It feels just like a bunch of college guys decided to make a film, and they had no girlfriends to rope into the production.

We don’t get to see the actual box-cover aliens till close to the end of the film, when the rambling house/spaceship finally launches with the remaining aliens and violently tuned human passengers.

The main lesson of such a film is in that do-it-yourself aspect. Thinking of where Jackson would end up in just a few years, after this and the violent puppets film (a favorite) Meet the Feebles (1989) basically a muppets on acid product, is kind of stunning.

This is running free on Prime (USA).

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