Ejecta Takes Alien Conspiracy Thrillers Back To The ’80s, In A Good Way
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I’m trying to think of the last alien abduction movie that I absolutely loved. The last year gave us the boring studio flick Dark Skies and the decent indie horror Almost Human, but I can’t remember the last one that really took me for a ride. That makes sense though, because I also can’t remember what I’m doing here, why my ass hurts so much, or why I’m covered in this viscous green slime. I think it may have something to do with the insane above trailer for the throwback thriller Ejecta, from co-directors Chad Archibald (NeverLost) and Matt Wiele, of the production company Foresight Features.
I suppose the low-budget, low-tech look of the film could be attributed to it actually having a low budget, but it looks to me like Ejecta‘s claustrophobic, homespun aesthetic is purposefully designed to appeal to anyone who grew up memorizing direct-to-VHS covers on video store shelves. Foresight is responsible for camp-embracing flicks like the “wrestlers vs. monsters” horror-comedy Monster Brawl and the sewage creature feature Septic Man. This is a more straightforward thriller than those films, though only lightly tethered to a more stable reality.
Written by Pontypool scribe Tony Burgess (who also penned Septic Man), Ejecta focuses on the fate of two men whose lives converge during a horrifying night as a solar storm rages in the sky. Not only do they have to worry about being stalked by whatever creatures they witnessed, but they’re also being harassed by a shadowy agency demanding to know everything that happened to them on that night. While I can admit this probably won’t be a groundbreaking thriller, Julian Richings (Cube) is a large part of why this trailer interests me, as he’s giving the most vein-popping performance of his career. They left something inside him, people! You can’t just fake that kind of intensity.
I also love that the directors are utilizing some first-person P.O.V. elements without making the entire thing a shaky-cam extravaganza, a blended technique that far too few filmmakers have tried. The freaky immediacy of seeing humanoid aliens in the woods is complemented by the cold, atmospheric sterility of the bits involving the secret organization. And if any sequences in Ejecta manage to be half as intense as the final 30 seconds of the trailer, the mothership will hear my cheers. Not only do big blacked-out eyes and the tagline “We were never alone” win me over, but that voiceover is one of the creepiest things I’ve heard in ages. It’s right up there with the “Wondrous Boat Ride” song from Willy Wonka.
“We all drowned in a lake of eternal fire.”
I’m going to wake up every morning hearing those words echoing off the walls of this synthetic alien cage I’ve been calling a home for the past few months. Check out the poster below and stay tuned for release dates as they are beamed down, so we can plan a midnight double feature of this and Panos Cosmatos’ minimalist head trip Beyond the Black Rainbow.
