Director – Jason Eisener, Screenplay – John Davies & Jason Eisener, Producers – Rob Cotterill, Josh Goldbloom, Jason Levangie, Brad Miska & Marc Tetreault, Photography – Mat Barkley, Music – Andrew Gordon MacPherson, Visual Effects – Tech God, Special Effects Supervisor – Gary Coates, Alien Creature Design – Applied Arts FX Studio (Supervisor – Steve Newburn), Production Design – Ewen Dickinson & Michael Pierson. Production Company – RLJE/Shudder/Cinepocalypse Productions/Bloody Disgusting/Shut Up & Colour Pictures/Yer Dead.
Cast
Phoebe Rex (Samantha), Dominic Mariche (Gary), Calem MacDonald (Billy), Asher Grayson Percival (Jack), Ben Tector (Miles), Emma Vickers (Trish), Isaiah Fortune (Dallas), Jonathan Torrens (Dad), Jessica Marie Brown (Mom)
Plot
Gary, his friends Jack and Miles, as well as Gary’s older teenage sister Samantha, shoot their own amateur movies around the house and barn. Tough guy Billy then walks in, charms Samantha and makes her feel a loser for hanging out doing kid’s stuff. Afterwards, she decides she doesn’t want to be in the films anymore. Gary and Samantha’s parents go away on business. Billy persuades Samantha to hold a party at the house. However, the party rapidly proceeds to go out of control. As Samantha tries to shut it down and Billy becomes abusive at her for trying to do so, the party is invaded by aliens who have crashed just offshore and are wanting to process humans.
Canadian director Jason Eisener first appeared with Hobo with a Shotgun, one of the fake trailers that appeared in Grindhouse (2007). This was of sufficient interest that Eisener was given the funding to expand it out into a full-length film with Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) with Rutger Hauer as the titular hobo. It was an assured debut that would normally carry a director on to other work. The funny thing is that Esiner seemed to disappear from screens thereafter where the only other work he has directed has been the Slumber Party Alien Abduction episode of V/H/S/2 (2013). It was not until Kids vs Aliens, over a decade after Hobo with a Shotgun appeared, before Eisener returned with a second feature-length film.
The other oddity about Eisener is that the only two feature films he has made to date have both been based on short films – Hobo with a Shotgun on his Grindhouse trailer, while Kids vs Aliens is a full-length expansion of Slumber Party Alien Abduction. This was also the second full-length film to have been spun off from the V/H/S series after Siren (2016). The film is produced by Brad Miska and his Bloody Disgusting production company, who are behind the V/H/S films.
Kids vs Aliens is a case of an idea making a passable short film but feeling belaboured at full length. The Slumber Party Alien Abduction short was fairly much just aliens invading a party but Kids vs Aliens has to pad everything out with an actual story. What we have would seem to be a semi-autobiographical work on Eisener’s part and wound into the mix are a bunch of kids making amateur films. These scenes are nothing special – 5/25/77 (2022) that came out the same year did a far wittier and more clever depiction of childhood fan filmmaking. The other part added is about how the sister (Phoebe Rex) is persuaded into hosting the party by the bully (Calem MacDonald) who pretends to like her – technically, this makes the whole slumber party aspect no longer relevant, now it is just a regular party.
The kids – (l to r) Ben Tector, Asher Grayson Percival, Phoebe Rex and Dominic Mariche
All of this is fairly broad and comes lacking in the cleverness or the snappy meta-awareness that Hobo with a Shotgun had. You cannot help but wonder who Jason Eisener imagined the audience for the film was – the pitch seems to be as a goofy, silly kid’s film, but the actual content with kids saying ‘fuck’ a lot and gory meltdown effects, which suggests a much more adult audience.
The disappointment of Kids vs Aliens it that it is a thin premise with little meat on it. The aliens seem to have no real rational schema in their actions – something to do with melting down humans to fix their spaceship. There is a lot of running around, before an abrupt ending that leaves you going “huh” where a group of government agents (?) appear out of nowhere and seem to transport the kids off to a ship that appears in the sky. It feels like the set up for a sequel.
