Director: Mauro Borrelli
Writer: Reggie Keyohara III, Sam Acton King (Screenplay) Mauro Borrelli (Story)
Starring: Wesley Snipes, RJ Mitte, Jedidiah Goodarce, Laura Bilgeri, Niko Pepaj, Hannah Rose May
Plot: When five friends vacation at a remote lake house they expect nothing less than a good time, unaware that planet Earth is under an alien invasion and mass-abduction.
Tagline – They’ve come to claim what’s theirs.
Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Weak Action Sci-Fi
Story: Final Recall starts as a group of friends, Brendan (Mitte), Charlie (Goodacre), Annie (Bilgeri), Rob (Pepaj) and Kara (May) head out of town to a lake house for a weekend away, they happen to clash with local Hunter (Snipes) who doesn’t welcome unwanted guests. With the group away from the world, there is a bigger issue in the world, an alien visit.
With a storm covering their arrival, it soon turns into a mass-abduction, where the five friends must turn to the Hunter to battle the aliens to survive, in a world that might not be there if they make it.
Thoughts on Final Recall
Characters – The Hunter was once an astronaut who is know living in the back woods, hunting for something unknown. He doesn’t take to the five friends, but has been planning for the visit of the aliens. He does fill in most of the holes in what is happening. The five friends are not given the deepest characters, with Brendan being the one that likes taking photos and uses the technology to see what is coming, Charlie is the broken young man that lost a girlfriend in the past, this is meant to be his grieving vacation, while maybe moving on with Annie who is here because of her best friend and has asthma (told you that don’t have much about them).
Performances – Wesley Snipes does play his character way over the top, this does make it hard to take him seriously. When it comes to the five young actors, they fill the generic side of the characters with ease.
Story – The story here follows five friends that go to lake house only to find themselves clashing with a hunter, before finding themselves under attack from aliens, who have bigger plans for the species. This is a story that does try to play into one of the biggest alien conspiracies known to man, that aliens created man and will continue to experiment over the years visiting to check up on them, this is fine it works well through the story, only getting there is just a slug, we have such a basic idea behind the characters, that nothing really makes any sense before the attack and almost plays out like a parody of Predator at times. What seems like a story that just doesn’t get completed in the film, we could easily have seen this as an opening to television series that will offer even more answers.
Action/Sci-Fi – The action in the film is weak, with mostly aimless chases through the woods, while any suspense filled moments finish instantly, which could be the same for the weak looking aliens used in the sci-fi elements of the film, along with the strange setting selected for the experiments.
Settings – The film uses the random cabin in the woods locations, which doesn’t add anything to the film, in fact it makes it look like any other alien film, while the ship’s interior seems to big for what is meant to be going on within the walls.
Special Effects – The effects are not good either, with most of the film looking very cheap when you think that we have an actor with a reputation of Snipes in the film.
Scene of the Movie – Wake up.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The aliens look bad.
Final Thoughts – This is a low budget action sci-fi film that shows how weak the budget is, even though we have an actor in Snipes that could easily sell a movie.
Overall: Cheap looking throughout.
