Invasion from Inner Earth

CinemaSerf

May 27, 2023 · via TMDB

★ 3.0

I should have realised as the title music was a sort of electronic version of something Ennio Morricone left on the studio floor that I was in for a treat... This is dreadful. A group of young folks find themselves stranded in the Canadian wilderness as technology around them is breaking down. It appears that we are amidst an invasion - but of where, by whom - and why? Don't expect any answers to these and any other questions in this shockingly over-long, badly lit and directed piece of nonsense. The score is frequently outperformed by the sound of static on the radios and the acting (and dancing!) - well, think little Toby's Christmas nativity when he was 8. It didn't help that the version I saw recently was terribly over-exposed (perhaps a dodgy NTSC conversion) but by the middle, the invasion couldn't come fast enough - never mind by the end.

This was REALLY bad and poorly made, and I'm being kinder to it than I should be, both because of its decent first half and the charm and beauty of the starring female protagonist, Debbi Pick (this seems to be her only film credit)--also it was obviously made on a super-low budget in my native country, Canada. There were some interesting ideas that would have made a decent film in much better hands (I have previously watched Rebane's later works, 'The Alpha Incident' and 'Twister's Revenge!', and this makes a 'trinity of tripe' that should best be avoided), and the cinematography is decent, simply because it's outdoors and shot in beautiful surroundings with natural light, most of the time. The low-budget special effects were abysmal, and incidents like plane crashes are simply off-screen and left to the viewer's imagination, so that Rebane doesn't have to show it. I saw this under the title 'They', in my Mill Creek 50-pack, 'Nightmare Worlds'--this by far was one of the worst and least interesting of the bunch. Do yourself a huge favour and if you see Rebane's name on a film (at the very least, for these three mentioned), don't touch them with a ten-foot pole. They're neither worth your time nor energy.