With its generic title, cheesy (and misleading) cover art, and direct-to-video release, Ben Rock’s Alien Raiders could easily be mistaken for a typically cheap, opportunistic B-movie. But anybody who picked up the DVD on its initial release or comes across it to stream now would discover a well-crafted sci-fi horror film that is smarter and more exciting than its packaging indicates.
Rock and screenwriters David Simkins and Julia Fair make the most of their movie’s modest scale, setting nearly the entire story at the Hastings Market grocery store in the small town of Buck Lake, Arizona. If it weren’t for the Alien Raiders title flashing onscreen, the opening montage could pass for the beginning of a small-scale crime thriller, with its barrage of bullets, drugs, knives, maps, blueprints and cameras, the tools that a crew of apparent robbers are putting together before heading to Buck Lake.
Even after the crew arrives, Alien Raiders continues to unfold like a heist movie, as the group of masked and armed assailants storm the sparsely populated store right at closing time, declaring over the intercom that they’re committing a robbery. Rock skillfully executes the beginning of a familiar type of B-movie, swiftly and clearly establishing the layout of the store and introducing a handful of characters for the audience to root for as they attempt to escape their dangerous attackers.
Except that’s not what happens, and that’s not what kind of movie Alien Raiders is. At the same time, the tonal shift is never jarring, and the introduction of sci-fi elements proceeds smoothly, often via oblique lines of dialogue that offer just enough hints at the larger world-building without devolving into exposition dumps. If the experience is initially disorienting for the viewer, that’s because it’s also disorienting for the employees and customers in the store, who have no idea why this group of potential terrorists is holding them hostage and conducting bizarre experiments on them.
The invaders are led by the decisive yet tortured Aaron Ritter (Carlos Bernard), who heads up a paramilitary-style squad clad in black. Bernard is still best known for playing the equally decisive yet tortured CTU agent Tony Almeida on 24, and he brings that same confidence and authority to Alien Raiders, always moving the action forward. There isn’t a single wasted moment in Alien Raiders’ 85-minute running time, and the actors establish their characters’ personalities on the run, in between shootouts and interrogations.
Jeff Licon and Samantha Streets play the hometown sweethearts who would be the protagonists in a more conventional hostage thriller, as Hastings stocker Benny and cashier Whitney. In the brief moments before Ritter’s crew arrives, they engage in some awkward banter implying their former romantic status, while Whitney rings up purchases for her stepfather, local police detective Seth Steadman (Matthew St. Patrick).
Store manager Mr. Tarkey (Joel McCrary) discreetly swipes some cash from the day’s earnings before announcing the store closure. As Benny walks the aisles looking for the final customers to assist, he nearly stumbles over a fellow employee lying on the floor, shot dead, and suddenly everything changes. Benny and Whitney stick around as the story progresses, but this isn’t a movie about an estranged couple coming back together as they fight back against their captors. It doesn’t take long to discover the distinct possibility that these two young people could actually be the bad guys.
As the title somewhat clumsily indicates, Ritter and his associates are not after the money at Hastings. They are, well, alien raiders, hunting down sinister extraterrestrial entities that can take control of human hosts. The robbery ruse doesn’t last long, especially once the twitchy team member they call Spooky (Philip Newby) starts grabbing everyone in the store and staring into their eyes, using his special ability to spot alien infestation. The filmmakers could play up the mystery of whether these are just deluded conspiracy theorists, but Alien Raiders doesn’t waste its time deceiving the audience. Aliens are real, they’ve invaded Earth, and their leader has attached itself to someone in the store.
After things go sideways with Spooky, Ritter’s team is forced to resort to cruder methods to determine who might be a secret alien, and the tense testing scenes owe more than a little to John Carpenter’s The Thing, especially the impromptu test with wires and blood samples that Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady devises in order to root out his base’s alien invader. “I’ll go get the milk,” says Ritter’s gruff lieutenant Kane (Rockmond Dunbar), with a resignation that suggests he’s had to engage in this arcane ritual more times than he’d like to remember.
Alien Raiders is full of lines like that, delivered with the weight and weariness of long shared history. The movie eventually reveals what the milk is for, but other vague references are left hanging. Instead of generating frustration or confusion, they contribute to the sense of a larger narrative, in which these particular events are only a small part.
Ritter’s back story is revealed in bits and pieces, and he turns out to be a sort of precursor to Josh O’Connor’s Daniel Kellner in Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. They’re both former employees of government contractors who went rogue when they learned the truth about the presence of extraterrestrials on Earth. The difference is that Ritter is more interested in an execution day than a disclosure day.
All of that information remains in the background while the main plot moves relentlessly forward. Rock doesn’t entirely abandon the hostage-thriller approach, as Seth and his fellow cops establish a base in the Hastings parking lot and attempt to negotiate with Ritter. There’s a familiar dynamic to the phone calls between Seth and Ritter, with the sometimes wary, sometimes bitter exchanges that recall classics like Dog Day Afternoon or Inside Man.
No one in those movies ever had to negotiate with an alien, and eventually Seth must realize that he’s dealing with something far bigger than criminals with guns. Any alien activity occurs mostly offscreen for the bulk of the movie, but Rock draws on his past experience as a special-effects artist in the climax, with some gloriously gruesome practical effects.
The creatures follow in the tradition of the chest-bursters from the Alien franchise, but Rock gives them their own distinctive ugliness, especially once they fully take over their hosts. “Was that Ken?” Seth asks when he finally witnesses an alien-possessed person firsthand. “Define ‘Ken,’” Ritter responds grimly.
All of these events take place at Christmastime, with a giant inflatable Santa Claus just outside the front door and instrumental holiday music playing on the store speakers. Touches like that allow Alien Raiders to retain a wry sense of humor even as the action gets nastier. Longtime X-Files writer and producer John Shiban is one of the movie’s producers, and it’s easy to imagine Mulder and Scully showing up to help Seth with his negotiations, in a special holiday episode of The X-Files.
Relegated instead to the DVD bargain bin, Alien Raiders hasn’t achieved X-Files levels of respect, but it deserves another look from anyone interested in clever, suspenseful stories of scrappy humans battling alien invaders.
