Altered
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, R, 88 m, 2006
Directed by Eduardo Sánchez. Stars Adam Kaufman, Brad William Henke, Paul McCarthy-Boyington, et al. 

Altered is the long-awaited sophomore effort from Eduardo Sánchez, the guerilla filmmaker who enjoyed an unlikely measure of success (bolstered largely by tween chatter on the Internet) with the economical pseudo-documentary, The Blair Witch Project. Though it whipped up a considerable hoopla with moviegoers (at least with those who hadn’t suffered through Cannibal Holocaust or The Last Broadcast) and was supported by many critics, I wasn’t a fan of Blair Witch; I found it gimmicky and inaccessible, if not kind of dull. (It did, however, bring on a spate of damn fine cinéma vérité-style horror shows: Cloverfield, Quarantine, Welcome to the Jungle.) Altered is Sánchez’s first solo flight (his co-pilot on Blair Witch was Daniel Myrick, who went on to make the Shyamalanesque thriller, The Believers), and it’s an elegantly structured bit of monster mash. It’s also admirably conceptual: most of the drama is dialogue-driven and confined to a single set, putting you in the mind of an off-off-Broadway show (or a particularly vulgar episode of “The Outer Limits”). But what’s most important here, and where far too many contributions to this genre of late have failed, is that the featured creature isn’t a bloodless CG creation, but rather a guy (actually, a very little guy) in a rubber monster suit. Sure, the thing may look kind of Muppety, almost laughable in close-up shots (though I’ve seen far worse, i.e. The Being), but forcing the actors to physically interact with it (the special edition of E.T. proved that the titular spaceman wouldn’t have been nearly as affecting the first go around as an animated character) helps them to work up reactions that are far more truthful than if they were playing off of a blue screen. Those who understand that acting is all about reacting will appreciate this, while those who put all their faith in the dateless wonders who spend their sunless days hunched over Macs and playing with pixels should go with Alone in the Dark.

Altered’s first act is riveting, to say the least, but as the picture zips further along, we come to realize that Sanchez is never going to be able to make good on the gasp-inducing revelation with which he’s been teasing us. When the big unveiling does arrive, the picture pulls into a dramatic cul-de-sac, leaving us with just another bloody valentine to the early works of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Though Altered never comes within a light year of the profundities we get mistakenly revved up for, there’s some adolescent fun in watching Sánchez and his mischievous makeup crew try to top themselves with one gross-out effect after another. And the filmmakers aren’t slow to serve up the bleeding action: No sooner than the first reel flickers to life with a Spielbergean shot of the twinkling heavens, we’re thrown into the company of three backwater hicks (one of them has a “business in the front, party in the back” hairstyle that would do Joe Dirt proud) as they charge through the woods on a late night hunt. One look at their weapons—a rifle, industrial-strength chains, a harpoon gun that could land Moby Dick—and we know that they’re not looking to bag Bambi’s mother. No, their query is a monster from Up There, and the tobacco-chomping yokels aren’t looking to catch it so they can claim a reward from The National Enquirer—this is payback for an earlier abduction that resulted in one of their buddies buying the farm. Thoroughly inept shots all, the boys luck into capturing the ill-tempered extraterrestrial when it stumbles into a bear trap. (Sánchez denies us a full view of it until much later in the show, even if only the least discriminating of small fries will find it worth the wait.) After beating the creature within an inch of its life (not an easy feat; this thing dies harder than Bruce Willis), the boys tie it up, throw it in the back of their pickup, and then haul it out to a buddy’s compound in the middle of nowhere. Big—and I mean BIG—mistake: The alien has a communication device attached to its guttiworks that can signal its slimy peeps to its whereabouts on the sly. The fellow who has been holing himself up in the prefab fortress knows this; he was once snatched by the alien’s brood and implanted with one of the organically fashioned thingamabobs. Not one to be kept tabs on by bug-eyed saucer men, our hero had the gadget cut out (and he’s been keeping it in a mayonnaise jar under Funk and Wagnalls’ porch ever since), but this hasn’t stopped the aliens from trying to track him down. I tell ya, these fuckers are more relentless than Samuel Gerard and Jack Magee combined.

Of course, the fun begins when the space invader escapes from its binds and starts to pick off its human captors one by one. The dippiest of the crackers has his intestines ripped out by the monster, leading to a most sickening tug of war. If Altered belongs to anyone, it’s “key special makeup effects artist” Thomas Floutz, but the acting values are unusually high for this sort of thing, too. I especially liked Brad William Henke as the mullet-headed hick; he has a sweet aura that belies his bearish form, and that stands in nice contrast to the boorish macho posturing of his Confederate flag-waving cronies. James Gammon also shines as the beer-swilling sheriff; he has a poignant death scene that any actor would be proud of. Gammon’s acting is open and unfussy, which may seem out of place in a genre picture in which everything else is anything but understated—especially the monster, which has green, slick skin, the teeth of a piranha, and a head reminiscent of the modern version of the Hulk’s big-brained foe, the Leader. Altered may not be as high-level as we’d like, but do we have any right to expect much in the way of art from the bad dream factory that gave us Seed of Chucky or, God help us all, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile?

May 15, 2009

“Altered” Review. © Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.