Forbidden World – Psychedelic ‘Alien’

I’ve seen my fair share of ‘Alien’ clones over the years.  \some of them have worked.  Most haven’t.  However, ‘Forbidden Worlds’ falls into that rare category of films that I really can’t make up my mind whether I enjoyed it or not.

The plot is hardly ground-breaking: giant monster stalks and kills a group of humans on a far-flung planetary outpost.  But the way it was done was certainly original.  I doubt I’ll be forgetting it any time soon.  The word I’d use to describe it is ‘random.’ It doesn’t really know what it wants to be.

We begin with our ‘hero’ in cryo-sleep in his spaceship, only to be woken by his (Stormtrooper-like) android sidekick and told he has to investigate a scientific research base on his way home.  We’re then treated to a space battle between him and a couple of random alien ships.  Most people might think this was shaping up to be some sort of campy ‘Star Wars’ B-movie, yet the lasers and spaceships are quickly ditched in favour of dark corridors and giant monsters when he arrives at the scene.

Now you’d think it would play out like ‘Alien’ and it does – to a degree, only an ‘Alien’ movie filled with montages of bright primary colours that make you think you’ve suddenly switched channels and are now watching a music video.  There aren’t many characters and none of them are particularly well-developed.  Instead of finding out anything about most of them we have long scenes of them wandering around the base, before meeting the creature.  These long scenes where not much happens mean the pacing does dip and, when you consider the film runs for well less than the usual 1.5 hours, having scenes which drag are actually quite an achievement – for all the wrong reasons.

Besides the hero – who isn’t in the film as much as you think a movie’s main character should be – the main stand-outs were the scientist who seems to be acting like he’s hamming it up with his kooky over-the-top performance and a woman who screams so much while she’s on screen that, in the end, I took to utilising the ‘mute’ button on my TV’s remote every time she came into view.

The sets are nice and it’s shot well (and by ‘well’ I mean filled with crazy colours and camera angles), but the monster itself leaves a lot to be desired.  Part of it looks like the classic xenomorph in ‘Alien,’ but it seems fatter and less agile, plus it doesn’t move very well and therefore isn’t that scary.

I didn’t dislike the film and I watched to the end.  Perhaps there was an element of ‘carcrash TV’ to it as I just couldn’t wait to see what happened.  However, it all played out as you’d probably imagine, meaning it was an interesting watch and I can understand why it’s got a bit of a ‘cult following,’ but – ultimately – it doesn’t really come close to ‘Alien’ due to its ‘style over substance’ formula.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that