ALIEN RAIDERS

The action begins in Hastings market, a late-night grocery store in a sleepy Arizona town. It's a quiet night, and boss Tarkey (Joel McCrary) decides to close up early, announcing the impending closure over the Tannoy speaker.

Meanwhile outside an armed group wait poised to storm the place. Among these are Logan (Tom Kiesche), Ritter (Carlos Bernard), Sterling (Courtney Ford), the appropriately-named Spooky (Phillip Newby), hot-headed Ulrich (Joseph Steven Yang) and Kane (Rockmond Dunbar). They don their masks and in they race.

Panic sets in among the few cashiers and customers left as the gunmen round them up and Spooky begins looking into each of their eyes. Initially the hostages think they're involved in a robbery, but after a while they realise something more sinister is afoot.

Whenever Spooky picks out a customer or shop worker and announces that they're "one", they get shot in cold blood. The remaining few are ushered into the back of the store where they are forced to participate in a sadistic test that will determine whether any of them are carriers of an alien virus that "gifted" Spooky has traced to the shop.

The test, a variation on the blood test performed to great effect in John Carpenter's THE THING, goes one further by involving each person losing at least one digit. It sounds nasty, but the participants have one choice: take part or get shot.

You'd think the police would turn up and help, given that one of the hostages was an off-duty cop who managed to report the situation on his radio shortly before his death. And the cops do indeed show up, surrounding the outside of the building and preparing for a siege situation. But they are held off by the ominous warning of "Stay back", daubed in hostage blood on the store's entrance doors.

Inside the store, the main focal attention is on attractive young cashier Whitney (Samantha Streets), whose stepdad Steadman (Mathew St Patrick) is one of the policemen desperately trying to get in there and save her. She's comforted by wannabe beau Benny (Jeffrey Licon), a goofy but affable sort. In what is a breath of fresh air for modern horror films (well, American ones anyway), these two are likeable characters who we actually don't want to see getting harmed.

Elsewhere, characterisation is perfunctory at best. The armed gang - scientists, it turns out - are stock cardboard cut-outs, two-dimensional shouters with little to do but argue about what to do next.

The premise is a simple but effective one, the store making a good location for economic and claustrophobic action to unfold in. Inevitably it brings out shades of the superior THE MIST, but ALIEN RAIDERS has a few good ideas of it's own.

The existence of the alien virus is kept ambiguous largely, and whatever hints of alien presence that do surface are kept wisely discreet. Far from being a cheesy monster flick as it's title suggests, ALIEN RAIDERS is surprisingly dark in tone and emerges as a satisfying, albeit small-scale, survival film.

It feels like a TV movie, with its slick but small production values and competent no-name casting. But that doesn't stop ALIEN RAIDERS from being quite enjoyable for it's unpretentious manner, brisk pace and occasionally splattery gunplay.

The film is presented in an uncut anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer, which handles the frequent dark scenes well. Texture and depth are strong, while details are relatively sharp and the saturated colour schemes are accurately rendered. It's an excellent presentation.

5.1 audio mixes offer solid and well-balanced playback in English, Spanish, Hungarian and Polish. Optional subtitles are available in no less than 11 languages, including English Hard-of-Hearing.

Static menus include a scene-selection menu page allowing access to the main feature via 20 chapters.

Bonus features begin with the 8-minute Making Of documentary "Hidden Terror". Presented in non-anamorphic 1.78:1, this offers a mix of cast and crew interviews alongside some decent behind-the-scenes footage. It's a fairly slick affair, as you'd expect from a Raw Feed (Warner Bros) production.

"Blood Sweat And Fears" is a further 3 minute featurette, this time presented in full-frame and focussing on the film's FX.

Two deleted scenes follow, offering 10-minutes of total footage that a text intro claims is film "confiscated" from a character's van.

"Whitney Cam" is 9 minutes of bogus MySpace blog footage that comes across as a tad embarrassing.

The package is rounded off by trailers for ALIEN RAIDERS, BELIEVERS, OTIS, REST STOP, REST STOP 2, and SUBLIME.

The disc is defaulted to open with a trailer showcasing Warner Bros' catalogue of Blu-ray titles.

A sterling visual presentation aside, it's fair to sum up both film and disc as "so-so".

Review by Stuart Willis