Invasion Planet Earth (2019) User Reviews

God Killed the Unicorns

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 22 February 2020]

Tom Dunn is a mental health care doctor at the Livermore Care Centre. As a child, he imagined himself as someone who would save the world from alien invaders. With the earth teetering on nuclear annihilation, aliens invade the planet. Tom and three of his unstable patients are taken up and placed in "Matrix" pods.

The characters were borderline. The dialogue had no hook. The plot was hokey. The film was made on a micro-budget and the things money had to buy were fine. The stuff a micro-budget needs that money doesn't buy is a good script and characters. The free stuff is where the film failed.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Waste of time

[mypobox-32602 · 1/10 · 10 June 2020]

As much as I love science fiction, this movie - rated at 3.3 - is overrated precisely by 3.3. I gave it 1 star just because there is 0 star rating. I don't know where to start: acting is bad, script is even worse, special effects are laughable. I would understand if it was primary school project but commercial movie production? Really?

Wow, this was dreadful

[sdagwagner · 2/10 · 17 March 2020]

Thomas Dunn is having a terrible day fit for a soap opera. Full of cliches, careless editing and continuity errors this is less a film and more of a red headed stepchild of Ed Wood.

We watch the story unfold with special effects so poor, they qualify as neither. Acting is also pretty painful for the most part with performers struggling to overcome a clunky and predictable story and a script that feels like a chainsaw lobotomy.

The value in Invasion Planet Earth is for film students looking to see how never to make a movie.

If you live in glass houses...

[chris-253-473879 · 9/10 · 11 January 2020]

A friend of mine's early films were so bad he even received death threats. So, mere apathy, despair and disgust bode well... My pal went on to make the hit '47 Meters Down' Shark movies... it took him at least half a dozen tries before he got there. Give Simon time...

I watched this film and at first I was uneasy but I knew the budget was almost zero and so I chilled and watched it for its merits. Suddenly I saw the humour, the Flash Gordon of the 1936 era... the Italian sci fi spaghettis of the '70's... and tv shows with rapid fire dialogues like the Tomorrow People... and Blake's Seven.

This film is the most unpretentious flick you'll ever see. I can't imagine shooting bits over a decade and stitching it together... the cardboard cutout Eighties style of vfx reminded me of the television productions of my youth, especially the early Dr Who's.

The story was actually very clever. I believe that the director wanted to produce the kind of film (made for children- but with adult twists) so that one would be reminded of the films (some of which we genuinely hated too) of our childhood... and I think it worked. It was a quirky unusual first attempt... but you'll never forget it... no matter how hard some of you might try! Lol. It's entrenched in your brain. I bet you think about it quite often?

Lighten up... watch it again. You think you can do better with the same constraints? Prove it... Have a go.

I really enjoyed it. Congratulations Simon Cox and team... looking forward to the sequel. :-)

What?

[kazzieloo-23677 · 1/10 · 8 March 2020]

What idiocy from hell did I just watch? Save yourselves from this movie. Run.

Almost a parody of a bad film.

[MrScoresheet · 26 January 2020]

The story of getting the film made is very inspiring, but not relevant to whether the film is any good or not. And sadly, it isn't. It's woeful in almost every regard.

The overall story is an interesting idea, but everything from the terrible script, the uniformly awful supporting cast, the stagey direction/editing and the mostly cheap VFX make you wonder why they even bothered.

If given the right resources maybe the director could come up with something impressive, but this is not a good calling card.

Doesn't compare to a big budget Hollywood movie.. but then why should it?

[agentkmartyn · 7/10 · 16 December 2019]

The acting was average and the special effects were low budget but I watched this film to the very end. Why? Because it was so different. There are big budget Hollywood movies coming out all the time where everything is perfectly directed and produced but this is an independant movie.This was a breath of fresh air. You need to watch this to understand what I mean. For the first 20 minutes I genuinely thought this was a spoof of the sci-fi B-movies of the good old days. Then I realised it wasn't. But by then I was already hooked. I am now a fan of Simon Cox's work and really hope he does more. It's great that this is a British movie and that Simon actually achieved something that he's wanted to do for any years. Simon, please make more movies and don't change they way you do them. This will be a cult classic.

Unbearable

[madsyy · 2/10 · 16 December 2019]

I have a thing for disaster movies or be it alien/space movies. Honestly I do not have any expectations from this one. You know something on the lines of all those Asylum movies would suffice for me. But this is just beyond worst.

I rarely ever ever give up on a movie midway no matter how crap it is but for this one at around 45min mark, I just lost my patience.

The trivia says that it took many years for the team to bring it out. While its a commendable fact that they did not give up on their dream project or whatev, am sorry to say the final output is not digestible at any level.

Spend some of your budget on a microphone next time, please

[lamieur · 2/10 · 16 December 2019]

What to say about this movie... The script is absolutely horrible, full of cliches, sure, but worse - nothing really makes sense. Let me makes some points (spoilers!)

Aliens can understand English of course, but they can only communicate by... transmitting apocalyptic images into people's heads... which is supposed to let them understand that they're being saved? Surprise - everyone is terrified and it only worsens the situation down on the ground.

Then the aliens turn out to have millions of ships, they can teleport people and make them breathe in open space, they can also disarm whole armies by (again) transmitting a sound into their heads... but they can't stop a few bombs from being blown. And of course a few bombs can trigger a chain reaction of some sorts and literally fry the whole Earth.

And they can make an infantile schizophrenic turn into a grown man in exactly 20 minutes, but again - can't fix hateful terrorists, world leaders and whomever from doing bad things.

And they provide cell phone service on the spaceship (understand protocols, encryption, radio bands necessary, probably needed to hack into some satellites to connect to the Earth's networks), can intercept communication both in space (the ISS, which has a side window) and on the ground... but again, they can't prevent a few bombs from being detonated remotely.

This is kind of explained as the aliens intentionally showing whomever was cherry-picked to be "saved" how bad the world was that killed their leftover friends and families down below... so they rebuild a better world somewhere else? Because history teaches us that after a war, there was never another? Oops.

And the people down on the ground know there's a huge spaceship in orbit (don't get me started on orbital mechanics, it's all fantasy with a ship can levitate in orbit over a single spot), they think it's an invasion, but still decide to instead... shoot each other during said invasion.

First part of the movie, when everyone is still on Earth, has such bad sound that it made watching this impossible. I've seen children make "movies" with better sound, and same quality of acting. Really horrible, in a single conversation in the same room you get one person speaking with big reverb, and another muffled like speaking through a phone. And they left in long pauses between actors' lines, just in case we thought real live people were having a conversation.

I don't mind low budget CGI if there's a story being told. Here the story is so silly, acting so wooden, and sound quality so bad, I recommend everyone to skip this title. And this didn't have such a low budget, the CGI is bad but there's really a lot of it, then they had actual tanks on the streets (completely unnecessary to the story), but couldn't get a couple of microphones and a sound engineer? Please, set up your priorities better next time...

Garbage.

[silent_whispers · 1/10 · 4 July 2020]

Garbage. Utter. Garbage. I don't say this lightly either. (Trust me I have watched some bad movies. Too many.) I don't care what the history is behind how long the movie took or it's budget. What matters is the story. The graphics could have been done differently, the story is so choppy and doesn't flow. Which is a shame because I think the ending "reveal" and "idea" really was interesting for a bit.

The script and dialogue is bad, the acting delivered suffers from so terrible green screen work. Which leads to the majority of the movie having no heart or soul to it. I feel that at least they could have made this movie tighter by making it more coherent. Solid writing can save a low graphics budget.

In the end: Garbage.

Let's put things right.

[damien-ahuir · 9/10 · 19 December 2019]

Clear your mind, forget all 2019 blockbusters and dive in baring in mind that this is a low budget, 17 years in the making independent film.

In a day and age of people raving at sharknado, where most of us grew up on power rangers special effects what is not to love about Invasion planet earth ?

Sure it falls short sometimes but it is a fantastic attempt with a complex story, visually good (remember budget was a shoe string)... And lots of hints at classics that rocked our 70s and 80s.

So grab some popcorn, relax, set back and let the invasion begin.

Everything gone wrong...

[artur-niedzielski · 1/10 · 17 December 2019]

I don't even try understand what kind of vision has a director of this... I don't even know how to call it. My eyes burns. Everything in this "movie" is so bad. Starting from scenario, acting, CGI... Someone should definitely change his job here... quickly. And bury or burn every copy of this crap. And forget...

Yes for the story

[AliensReservoir · 7/10 · 16 December 2019]

The story got to be quite original. Although a lot of work need to be made on the script, character development is a bit boring as well as the flashback tunnel effect, Fx and other things are low budget. Having said that, there is definitively something in this movie.

Also I should say the last 30 minutes were good and left a good taste ending this way.

At the end of the day i did not regret watching this movie, I just hope that one day it will be done again but with a lot of money

Excellent mind twisting science fiction.

[eleanor-piper · 9/10 · 3 January 2020]

I really enjoyed this zero budget film. Simon Cox has created a film that takes a bit of thought and consideration...the same way you have to get a little deeper into Dark City, or Jacob's Ladder. (The best film of this kind was Arrival in my opinion.) If you like science fiction that you have to turn your brain on for, this one will be for you. Considering the budget, this film was truly something special. The effects were excellent. The sound track was excellent. And the story was great. But I like twisty convoluted films...a lot of people don't. If you liked Interstellar, you'll like this one.

A fantastic British adventure!

[momentsoffilm · 9/10 · 22 January 2020]

It's lovely to see a big adventurous Sci-Fi film with a British bent. So many these days are big Hollywood budget with American stories or British stories retold in America and that's great but it's also nice that people are still making home grown Sci-Fi and what the film lacks in big budget polish it makes up for in genuine heartfelt story. I wish there were more like this.

7 Years

[andreibalas282 · 1/10 · 16 December 2019]

Besides the need for 7-9 years to make this movie , the writing of the script have missing pieces plus a wrong title. I understand there is a low budget movie , but it should have at least a good story line, but is not the case for this one.

Atleast she's looks good

[rexroatharrison · 1/10 · 11 February 2020]

10/10 worst movie I've ever seen! Please don't make the mistake of wasting you're money on this movie like me:(

Throwback to the seventies and eithies, love letter to scifi

[livingspirit · 7/10 · 23 January 2020]

A film not to be compared to the blockbusters of today, but SHOULD be considered alongside 6 Million Dollar Man, Space 1999, Gorgo and all the other classic shows we would watch on TV, of find on BBC 2 at strange times of the day. Sincere and lovingly reflective of those years, if you yearn for that feeling, you will I am sure enjoy this film. Well done everyone involved for making a truly unique film.

Sci-fi Misfire

[SirBjean · 17 December 2019]

What the producers have used as a selling point for the movie (it took a 100 years to complete) has set it up to be ridiculed and sadly for legitimate reasons. I can forgive bad CGI but not poorly recorded dialogue, ever. It sounds terrible in some areas and almost average in others. The image is barely professional in parts too. It looks amateur mainly because it's so soft and cheap looking. The story itself had me wondering why no one had taken this team to the side early on and questioned its overall message and goal. It has lots of genres blended together but with out a cohesive tie. I was lost for most of it and even laughed at some of the silly lines. I reasoned that if this had the intention of being a parody or spoof comedy it would be fitting. It doesn't fail because of its low budget roots. It doesn't fail because of its funny CGI. It fails because it's a weak story constructed poorly and the producers let the sound down (cardinal sin). It fails because we expect more in this day and age and despite the 'time' this took to complete it just doesn't cut it.

So, so bad

[fox-97698 · 1/10 · 29 December 2019]

If this thing took 9 years to get to the screen, it's probably only because it spent the vast majority of that time

Some films are "so bad they're good", not this one. The plot is vacuous, the acting wooden and the special effects are a bit too special.

Brilliant film

[sidhu008 · 8/10 · 1 January 2020]

Thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. Looking forward to seeing more of your work Simon. Keep up the good work mate.

Not at all bad for the budget

[lids-970-950838 · 7/10 · 24 December 2019]

I don't know why this is getting the reviews it is getting. The effects are really good for a low budget indie film, I've seen far worse on bbc productions with money thrown at them. Really impressed with the space ships and off world stuff, and some lovely location shots. The acting is not bad, it is what it is, some of the actors are very stiff and feel like they are chewing the scenery in a school play, but others are excellent and natural, but what I'd expect from a film of this level. It is confusing in places but not hard to follow. The production and over all look of the film is impressive for indie. It is better than some films I've seen on the Syfy and horror channels. I really enjoyed it, a good romp, the only let down for me was the awful overbearing background music, and the lack of subtitles. Overall a great low budget, home grown indie sci-fi film. Ignore the one reviews and make your own mind up.

Awesome

[azzaadz · 10/10 · 3 January 2020]

I'm seeing lots of bad reviews here but I was blown away by this movie. The passion and hard work behind it shows and yes it's not had a budget of Star Wars proportions but that adds to the nostalgia feel for me where some imagination comes in useful. I enjoyed the twists and Toyah performing Step Into The New World was stunning. Always give something a watch if curious and this is definitely worth a watch.

It's a crowd funded and private funded low budget film with heart, determination and commitment

[zaphodtrenchcoat · 10/10 · 29 December 2019]

I have watched this film at one of the early showings. I am one of the zombies. I supported the project via crowd funding and bought the merchandise. You might say I am biased.

What I want to say is that you can not compare this to a Hollywood film or film studio that has the ability to cough up a budget first. What you have is a back story to how this film was made and how it had its cinema release, internet release and now DVD that is available on shelve and not a bargain basket. You also have the commitment from ALL the actors AND crew over the years. With any creative project, parts of it can be picked apart. This film deserves to be taken as a whole. So many parts have had to come together. If after watching this film I realy would like to ask you to seek out other footage available online regards the crowdfunding and watch the making off film.

January 2nd 2020. I've just watched the film again after receiving my pre ordered copy from Amazon.

Holly Cow. I must have been asleep when I watched this at the Birmingham screening. I dont remember half of what I have just watched. Out Standing. Bloody fantastic.

ytho

[TopDawgCritic · 3/10 · 19 December 2019]

This was just horrible. I've seen a 5th grade drama class produce better writing. How did this even make it to any screen? I really tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, accepting the fact it's filmed as a 1970's S/VFX quality film, but the writing half way through just made me annoyed. Sad, because it could've easily passed as an adequate retro sci-fi flick. A generous 3/10 from me