Crawlspace - Can anyone say `Aliens?'

We're told by the writing at the beginning of `Crawlspace' that all contact with a top secret Australian military base has been lost (don't you just hate it when that happens?) and now, the only thing left to do is send in a platoon of gruff, rough-and-ready soldiers (think that squad of `Colonial Marines' from `Aliens') armed with motion trackers (think those `motion trackers' the Colonial Marines used in `Aliens') to see what's gone wrong.

Of course Aliens had about an hour of screen time before the Marines arrived. In that time we were shown who was who and character was developed. In Crawlspace, we're just shown them in a helicopter arriving at the facility. Of course there's the cocky one (think Hudson from Aliens) and the tough female one (think Vasquez from Aliens) and the dependable one (who, in my opinion, was Australia's answer to Jason Statham).

Once inside the base they creep around tunnels and air ducts (think a cross between the air ducts Newt leads Ripley through at the end of Aliens, only with those circular doors that were being closed behind Captain Dallas in Alien) and other sets that look straight out of the colony on LV-426. Then, while doing so, we're treated to some `first person' shots showing our heroes' gun barrels that make you feel like you're playing Doom while some of the lines the characters speak are directly lifted from Aliens (in particular the scene where the Colonial Marines first get attacked under the Cooling Towers and their motion trackers are going crazy).

So, what's waiting for our Aussie Colonial Marines? Well, there's a couple of scares where the base's locals jump around ahead of them (the way Newt did when the Colonial Marines first found her in Aliens) then they meet a Gorillagram, who comes out of a smoky background the way some xenomorphs do in Aliens. But then the whole film turns into something more like Scanners.

There's a couple of nice twists in the tale that you might not see coming. All in all this film is too average to be that memorable, which is a shame, because Australia is gaining quite a nice reputation for coming up with films that are a little bit different to Hollywood's output.

Watch if you really want to (or have scratched your Aliens DVD and can't be bothered to buy a new one just yet).

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back