source: Alien Dawn

You cant put into words how terrible this film is. I cant believe the fact that its just trying to be war of the worlds. The original 50's film had more worth credit then this. The acting was poor the effects terrible and the sound effects stolen straight from war of the worlds. I cant understand in this day and age how a company can make this when its just a rip off copyrighted movie. In fact i laughed really hard when i read at the end of the credits that no infringements were meant to have been caused. really!!?? It really is so bad i wished i hadn't wasted my time watching it! Sorry but i wanted to pull my eyes out and put them in my ears

Aliens invade the SW USA. They make sounds like 1950s aliens, most specifically, the sounds in War of the Worlds, 1953. Characters named Brad Raybury and Joni Mitchell? Good grief. Soon enough, the story centers on survivors are Marissa, Anders, and Roger, with no resources to speak of, and no plans. They have long arguments about what food is common, and what is not. These folks are pointless. They care more about bickering than about surviving. Later they join up with Sera and Tiffany. This is a tough one. Should I root for the powerful, effective aliens or the feckless, lame moronic humans? -----Scores------ Cinematography: 2/10 Some of it is bad; much of the rest is really bad. The found footage parts were as atrocious as expected. Sound: 2/10 Terrible. Leveling was done by someone who hates audiences. Acting: 0/10 Terrible. All the performances. All the characters are unlikeable. There are too many absurd arguments about ridiculous non-issues. If one is going to have a mostly eastern European cast, why not film in eastern Europe to save money? Screenplay: 0/10 Very stupid dialog. Rips off War of the Worlds and Skyline rather openly. The depictions of ultimate stupidity (Woman asks for water. Man forces a cup of bleach down her throat. Man gets excited; does not know why the woman is suddenly in acute distress.) were fairly convincing. How are such lame, incompetent people to make any progress against the aliens? Cell phones work during this invasion? Not for long. The military hands out heavy weapons to civilians? Nope. SFX: 0/10 Incredibly bad. One of the worst jobs I have ever seen, beginning to end.

It didn't take long for me to start cheering for the aliens in this one. The acting and writing is terrible and the direction is even worse. The plot is moved along by shaky, flickering news coverage (including clips of President Obama) and by first-person "video diary" footage. It doesn't even seem as though there was a script, just loose direction. You know how some movies are released straight to DVD? This one is released straight to MST3k. Even if Rachelle Dimaria started fighting the aliens topless, it still wouldn't be worth your time, although let me know if that movie gets made. ;) The estimated budget was close to $2M, how many starving people could have been fed instead? Which is why anyone involved with this movie deserves to be fed to the aliens.

This movie follows has a very "War of the Worldsy" theme, except that there are other movies that do it better, much much better. Any movie that depends heavily on visual FX without the budget and no script to speak of will suffer the consequences so I expected to be entertained by the unintentional badness but I was so wrong. -Bad acting can be interesting to watch. Not this time! The Main characters are boring and their relationships are stitched together rather sloppily. -Bad FX can be interesting to watch too. Nope, these just stink and they became annoying. The explosions and sparks (and there are a ton of these) have outlines around them and they kept using this horrid texture over the shots to simulate debris. The lighting of CG elements have a tendency of not matching the live footage and they were animated quite poorly. Not to mention some of the worst depth of field I've seen, rub petroleum jelly in your right eye, it would be the same effect. -Thin plots can be fun. Alien Dawn fails on this front as well, it just stumbled along until it came to it's anticlimactic end. I get it, technology has a lot of people believing they too can make sci fi movies but come on!

It's really impossible to overstate the awfulness on display here. This isn't just a "bad film" — it's incoherent. There's really nothing at all to even criticize. It's so disorganized and amateurish it's about as meaningful as watching watching static. Some actors shout some things. They seem alarmed and angry. There are bangs and flashes. Occasionally some very not-so-special effects appear on the screen. I could tell there was an alien invasion and there were Wars of the Worlds type tripody invaders, but that's about it. I couldn't watch past the first half hour. I didn't feel like I was stopping anything in particular. There was nothing going on to stop. It was just an incomprehensible stream of images and noises that I finally got tired of trying to make sense of. Even calling this a "student project" would be giving it too much credit: I've seen (much) better student film projects. It's a total mystery how something like this ends up with being distributed. Weird.

War of the Worlds was king when I watched it and it was great. This movie is a modern War of the Worlds, but that doesn't mean it's good. Compared to Nick's "Alien Dawn," it's 50/50 for me. The reporters in the movie act like they were glad that Obama is dead, like they were hating his guts severely (Republicans). The aliens in this film had high-tech machines and that's good. Comparison between the two "Alien Dawns," I'd watch this one and I never feel like this is a rip-off of Mega Man Star Force/Damien Dawn (a German Edward from Twilight rip-off singer) because they hide it awfully well. Nick doesn't even try to hide that. This movie isn't king, but compared to the other one, I like it better, even if the news reporters act like Satanists.

Every bit of this movie is clichéd and brought nothing new to the genre or made for a gratifying evening in with pop-corn in-tow. The acting is terrible, granted the sfx not bad for a B-grade movie, and the most positive aspect of this movie. It's interesting they show news broadcasts and video feeds and intersperse it into the drama, but for me me this failed to drum up any suspense or emotion when I was watching this movie. I couldn't really relate to any of the characters and found myself becoming impatient as I watched on. It was a 1:20hr movie, but it felt like 3Hrs! I think what I'm trying to say is that there isn't much of a plot. Most of the idea's have been taken from War of the Worlds, Battle Los Angeles and many other movies. All of which executed the drama, suspense much better. Not the worst movie I've seen this year, but lacks drive.

One can say sooo little things about this..... Monumentaly awful in every aspect imaginable!!!! Why do people spend money to make such awfulness?!!?!? There are no words vivid enough to express how terribly, terribly, terribly bad this thing is...... A horrible torture of the optic nerve, a horrendous testament to the ear.... its horribility is not even slightly funny so as to be sporadicly amused. I give it minus 10 stars. If there was a movie-pollution meter this would definitely be categorized as most toxic, hazardous and extremely deadly for the human condition, much like willingly drinking half a gallon of chlorine!!!!

Watching Alien Dawn with an open mind as I do with all the movies I watch though with low expectations, and even with that mindset I still found myself watching a terrible movie where you actually have to fish around to find a redeeming quality of some kind. The special effects are incredibly ugly and artificially constructed(and that is being kind), and I'd be hard pressed to think of any movie recently that actually made me feel ill watching the camera work and editing. Then we have direction that is practically non-existent, vomit-inducing dialogue and a tedious and predictable story with no suspense, thrills or fun that manages to be derivative of several (better too) movies. The characters ranges from obnoxious to bland, and the acting is amateurish all round. All in all, even when open-minded and not expecting much, Alien Dawn still managed to be sci-fi junk of the highest order. 1/10 Bethany Cox