Directed, edited, co-composed, co-produced, and co-written by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, The Area 51 Incident is a science fiction adventure that sees a group of scientists unleash a pandora’s box of alien foes upon the world. Science fiction is perhaps the hardest genre of film to pull off — a film can easily become campy or overseasoned with too many ideas. The Area 51 Incident does not succumb to these particular traps, however, did trip over its footing in the first few acts, as well as a few deadweight characters.

In The Area 51 Incident, Doug (Toby Wynn-Davies), the Director of Operations of Britain’s area 51, hosts a tour around area 51 for his son Trent (Scott Jeffrey) and a graduate from their facility named Jenny (Megan Purvis). Doug is excited to show them the team’s latest experiment — a series of wormholes which they are curious to know what is on the other side. When the wormhole they are experimenting on reached a critical state, it caused a rift that allowed a race of deadly aliens to enter our world. After quickly overtaking area 51, the aliens spread across Britain, killing and eating anyone that crosses their path, and eventually widening the wormhole to let in the mother of all aliens.

In typical Uncork’d Entertainment fashion, The Area 51 Incident is another relatively high-value production with less than stellar execution. This distribution company can always be counted on for films that look like they belong in movie theaters but upon experiencing a story feels much more at home on the SyFy channel. First, the premise calls for the audience to believe that somewhere like Area 51, known to shoot on sight, would have something like a take your kid to work day. The story makes little sense from the outset, despite the writing calling for great big droppings of expositional nuggets to set up the science behind the nonsense. The story moves from scene to scene without much connection or setup from prior scenes, so the story seems aimless and inconsistent. I prefer rewinding movies for laughs, not because the narrative is difficult to comprehend.

Unfortunately, there was apparently no time for character development or story arcs, and though there are plenty of cast members, none of the characters are given any endearing or reflective moments in which the audience would be able to know them enough to care for their well-being. Each character, even the main characters, seemed like fodder. There was really no clear main character to follow. The film almost redeemed itself in its final act, which far surpassed the rest of the film in quality.

I can say that the special effects for the film are not all that bad. I would have appreciated practical effects, but the writing for the film was quite lazy, so it is expected that CGI was used instead. The design of the aliens was great, it was basically the alien from Alien, including similar baby and adult stages as well. Overall, the film in premise and design can be likened to a cross between The Mist and Alien. Furthermore, in the last 20 minutes of the film, the musical score suddenly gets more haunting and horrifying, making for some truly intense moments during those last few action scenes.

The Area 51 Incident has the polish of a movie meant for mass audiences but has the writing and acting quality of a family making a home movie. Still, the film has heart, and a few good kill-off scenes to boot. I would have appreciated the film more if it had been brave enough to hit the self-destruct button at the end, however, but nonetheless, the final act is almost worth sitting through the entirety of the movie.

MOVIE RATING — 6 out of 10