Alien Express (2005)

good back-story, and good acting

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

We all know that special effects cost money, but it seems as if they could have used the money they saved writing the script to get some better shots. The train is obviously a model in most moving shots, the helicopter is obviously computer generated, the alien looks like the one from the end of Spaceballs, except it's a decade later and Spaceballs had an excuse.The only smart thing they did was blur all of the special effects to make them harder to see.Not even the actors could compensate for such a poorly written script and it's pretty obvious they didn't really try either.Please, don't waste your time. Please.

Yes, it is not James Cameron or Ridley Scott. However, my little sister is the costume designer and everyone looked well-costumed. Concidentally, the character of "Phil" is also a friend of mine so I root for him as well.It's good to see friends and loved ones get work - even if they are in lesser productions. For my sister, it was a good break and has led to other movies, etc. I wouldn't have watched it but for the connection.It is hard to see how some of these get made, though. I guess I don't understand the biz.While it was good opportunity for my sister, it has hard to watch how some careers have fallen. From La Bamba to Alien Express, ouch.

I did my best to watch this two hour fiasco. It combined the awful special effects and plot of the original "Blob," with an execrable boosting of the (outstanding in the original) screenplay of "Runaway Train." The only explanation for this movie is that someone needed to take a huge tax deduction and figured they'd combine it with a shot at hosting a casting couch. What an incredible stinker! Lou Diamond Phillips is anxious to show us why he will take any part, no matter how bad. Barry Corbin continues his career as a typecast creep, a U.S. Senator from Texas and plays it well. He should next do the lead role in the story of Trent Lott or Jesse Helms. The women in this flick all seem to have gotten their roles as consolation prizes in the Fay Wray Memorial screaming contest. Special effects are unbelievably bad. H.S. kids in film class in North Dakota could have done a better job. The writers must have pulled a heist at the cliché bank to accumulate this many. I couldn't watch any more without being forced to sit in the Clockwork Orange chair. I have no idea how it ended, except obviously, 119 minutes too late. Ugh! Caveat emptor.

There is a threshold in any theatrical work, when the technical/dramatic flaws become so bad (or distracting), that the effort actually become far more entertaining as a comedy, rather than viewed as a serious drama. "Dead Rail" (or as it was billed on SciFi as "Alien Express") definitely makes that transition. With a combination of eco-terrorist takeover/runaway train disaster/alien invasion (with a critter very similar to the chest burster's from Alien)/re-found love genre, everyone is guaranteed to find something humorous in this made-for-TV movie. The acting is mainly forgettable, but with such a outrageously unbelievable plot line who cares? Really fake looking special effects further enhance the shlock nature of this production. Did anybody in the production group have even a vague clue how a real train runs? If you like train movies just for their own sake, you'll need oxygen to be revived after passing out from laughing too long at the absolute nonsense in this film. Watch Dead Rail/Alien Express for some unchallenging entertainment; just don't take it seriously.