Invasion Planet Earth (2019) User Reviews (141)

A step above an Asylum film.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 21 October 2021]

When are independent production companies going to realize that audiences are over formula films, particularly in the disaster genre, where the problems of one fictional family that nobody will really cares about, comes just as the world is facing destruction? It's a cliche that goes way past the production of the big screen disaster blockbusters like "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012". Then take into account the fact that there are no big stars in it and that it takes forever for anything to happen. You're stuck with boring soap opera like elements that try to manipulate the audience into caring, and because you've only known these characters for a few minutes, you really just don't care.

The main story deals with grieving parents who have lost a child and just discovering that they are expecting another. Then word comes out that invaders from another planet are on their way and that sets in panic. Not that the world is going to end its entirety but the fact that a family facing great news will now have to suffer again. Well, you can't suffer when your dead, but the audience must through a good hour of boring stuff before the typical CGI computer-generated effects take over which aren't really all that good to begin with.

With the Asylum films, I knew to keep my finger on the fast-forward button until it look like something interesting was happening, whether it be a stupid looking creature or an asteroid approaching or a sudden freezing snow storm. At least the characters in those films are consistently so stupid that you enjoy laughing at them, but these characters are just boring and staid. In this case, it's a British made direct-to-video film, so at least you have some attractive accents, but that's not really enough to want to stick with it. The family values cliches are sickeningly nauseating and after a while, it just comes down to show me the Carnage!

Whatever they were opting for here just didn't work...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 30 December 2020]

I was lured in by this 2019 sci-fi movie's rather impressive and interesting cover/poster. And sad to say, then the movie's cover/poster was actually the best thing about the entire movie experience. Yeah, I kid you not.

The storyline told in "Invasion Planet Earth" by writers Simon Cox and Simon Bovey just didn't work out all that well. It felt confusing and shattered, sort of as if director Simon Cox was trying to assemble bits and pieces of various broken storyline fragments and tie it together to make a whole new storyline. It just didn't work, and the movie was a confusing mess of a non-linear experience.

The acting in the movie was actually adequate enough, taking into consideration the premise that the actors and actresses were working under. Granted, the actors and actresses didn't really have much of a coherent storyline or script to work with, and it was showing.

Visually the movie was adequate, not impressive mind you, but adequate. There are many other sci-fi movies out there with far more impressive and visually pleasing special effects. And for me, a sci-fi movie must have spectacular and realistic effects. "Invasion Planet Earth" wasn't really able to brag about having special effects and CGI that will blow you away and leave you breathless.

For me, it was the scramble confusing heap of a storyline that killed the movie. Jumping back and forth between different realities or what not just didn't work for me, especially since the red thread got lost in transition.

Ultimately, "Invasion Planet Earth" is not an impressive sci-fi movie, nor is it a particularly outstanding or memorable one. I managed to get halfway through the ordeal and just gave up given the atrocity that passes as a storyline. And I have absolutely no interest in returning to watch the rest of the movie.

My rating of "Invasion Planet Earth" settles on a generous three out of ten stars.

God Killed the Unicorns

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 22 February 2020]

Tom Dunn is a mental health care doctor at the Livermore Care Centre. As a child, he imagined himself as someone who would save the world from alien invaders. With the earth teetering on nuclear annihilation, aliens invade the planet. Tom and three of his unstable patients are taken up and placed in "Matrix" pods.

The characters were borderline. The dialogue had no hook. The plot was hokey. The film was made on a micro-budget and the things money had to buy were fine. The stuff a micro-budget needs that money doesn't buy is a good script and characters. The free stuff is where the film failed.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Like pulling teeth!

[flemmshell · 1/10 · 3 April 2021]

I'm a huge movie buff and believe me I watch a lot from the 30s to 2021. I'm a patient person and I can enjoy many a good B movie. I give things a chance. I can usually watch and get through bad films. But this is beyond bad. It was all over the place. It didn't flow. The story line was bad, plots were weak, The whole thing was a mess. I couldn't even watch it for the effects. It was painful, like pulling teeth. I got 3/4 way through. Don't waste precious time with this rubbish.

Almost a parody of a bad film.

[MrScoresheet · 26 January 2020]

The story of getting the film made is very inspiring, but not relevant to whether the film is any good or not. And sadly, it isn't. It's woeful in almost every regard.

The overall story is an interesting idea, but everything from the terrible script, the uniformly awful supporting cast, the stagey direction/editing and the mostly cheap VFX make you wonder why they even bothered.

If given the right resources maybe the director could come up with something impressive, but this is not a good calling card.

Waste of time

[mypobox-32602 · 1/10 · 10 June 2020]

As much as I love science fiction, this movie - rated at 3.3 - is overrated precisely by 3.3. I gave it 1 star just because there is 0 star rating. I don't know where to start: acting is bad, script is even worse, special effects are laughable. I would understand if it was primary school project but commercial movie production? Really?

Unbearable

[madsyy · 2/10 · 16 December 2019]

I have a thing for disaster movies or be it alien/space movies. Honestly I do not have any expectations from this one. You know something on the lines of all those Asylum movies would suffice for me. But this is just beyond worst.

I rarely ever ever give up on a movie midway no matter how crap it is but for this one at around 45min mark, I just lost my patience.

The trivia says that it took many years for the team to bring it out. While its a commendable fact that they did not give up on their dream project or whatev, am sorry to say the final output is not digestible at any level.

Wow, this was dreadful

[sdagwagner · 2/10 · 17 March 2020]

Thomas Dunn is having a terrible day fit for a soap opera. Full of cliches, careless editing and continuity errors this is less a film and more of a red headed stepchild of Ed Wood.

We watch the story unfold with special effects so poor, they qualify as neither. Acting is also pretty painful for the most part with performers struggling to overcome a clunky and predictable story and a script that feels like a chainsaw lobotomy.

The value in Invasion Planet Earth is for film students looking to see how never to make a movie.

Thomas Dunn IS HAVING A BAD DAY !

[tonybeatson · 1/10 · 4 July 2022]

Thomas Dunn's day cant be any worse than mine after watching this film .....17 years in the making ,and i felt ever one of them... before anyone starts ...yes i know it was made on a low budget and yes an independent film but you have to give the viewer something to work with.... its not what i would call a nights entertainment watching something that you are fighting with yourself not to switch off and you keep thinking well it may get better as it goes along but it don't ,....when it could be me ? Looking at some of the other reviews on here 10 s and 9s ect.

Spend some of your budget on a microphone next time, please

[lamieur · 2/10 · 16 December 2019]

What to say about this movie... The script is absolutely horrible, full of cliches, sure, but worse - nothing really makes sense. Let me makes some points (spoilers!)

Aliens can understand English of course, but they can only communicate by... transmitting apocalyptic images into people's heads... which is supposed to let them understand that they're being saved? Surprise - everyone is terrified and it only worsens the situation down on the ground.

Then the aliens turn out to have millions of ships, they can teleport people and make them breathe in open space, they can also disarm whole armies by (again) transmitting a sound into their heads... but they can't stop a few bombs from being blown. And of course a few bombs can trigger a chain reaction of some sorts and literally fry the whole Earth.

And they can make an infantile schizophrenic turn into a grown man in exactly 20 minutes, but again - can't fix hateful terrorists, world leaders and whomever from doing bad things.

And they provide cell phone service on the spaceship (understand protocols, encryption, radio bands necessary, probably needed to hack into some satellites to connect to the Earth's networks), can intercept communication both in space (the ISS, which has a side window) and on the ground... but again, they can't prevent a few bombs from being detonated remotely.

This is kind of explained as the aliens intentionally showing whomever was cherry-picked to be "saved" how bad the world was that killed their leftover friends and families down below... so they rebuild a better world somewhere else? Because history teaches us that after a war, there was never another? Oops.

And the people down on the ground know there's a huge spaceship in orbit (don't get me started on orbital mechanics, it's all fantasy with a ship can levitate in orbit over a single spot), they think it's an invasion, but still decide to instead... shoot each other during said invasion.

First part of the movie, when everyone is still on Earth, has such bad sound that it made watching this impossible. I've seen children make "movies" with better sound, and same quality of acting. Really horrible, in a single conversation in the same room you get one person speaking with big reverb, and another muffled like speaking through a phone. And they left in long pauses between actors' lines, just in case we thought real live people were having a conversation.

I don't mind low budget CGI if there's a story being told. Here the story is so silly, acting so wooden, and sound quality so bad, I recommend everyone to skip this title. And this didn't have such a low budget, the CGI is bad but there's really a lot of it, then they had actual tanks on the streets (completely unnecessary to the story), but couldn't get a couple of microphones and a sound engineer? Please, set up your priorities better next time...

Woeful

[smcbrizzle · 1/10 · 11 March 2021]

Still have 20 min left of the movie and can't decide whether to watch to the end or just gouge my eyes out.

Let's put things right.

[damien-ahuir · 9/10 · 19 December 2019]

Clear your mind, forget all 2019 blockbusters and dive in baring in mind that this is a low budget, 17 years in the making independent film.

In a day and age of people raving at sharknado, where most of us grew up on power rangers special effects what is not to love about Invasion planet earth ?

Sure it falls short sometimes but it is a fantastic attempt with a complex story, visually good (remember budget was a shoe string)... And lots of hints at classics that rocked our 70s and 80s.

So grab some popcorn, relax, set back and let the invasion begin.

If you live in glass houses...

[chris-253-473879 · 6/10 · 11 January 2020]

A friend of mine's early films were so bad he even received death threats. So, mere apathy, despair and disgust bode well... My pal went on to make the hit '47 Meters Down' Shark movies... it took him at least half a dozen tries before he got there. Give Simon time...

I watched this film and at first I was uneasy but I knew the budget was almost zero and so I chilled and watched it for its merits. Suddenly I saw the humour, the Flash Gordon of the 1936 era... the Italian sci fi spaghettis of the '70's... and tv shows with rapid fire dialogues like the Tomorrow People... and Blake's Seven.

This film is the most unpretentious flick you'll ever see. I can't imagine shooting bits over a decade and stitching it together... the cardboard cutout Eighties style of vfx reminded me of the television productions of my youth, especially the early Dr Who's.

The story was actually very clever. I believe that the director wanted to produce the kind of film (made for children- but with adult twists) so that one would be reminded of the films (some of which we genuinely hated too) of our childhood... and I think it worked. It was a quirky unusual first attempt... but you'll never forget it... no matter how hard some of you might try! Lol. It's entrenched in your brain. I bet you think about it quite often?

Lighten up... watch it again. You think you can do better with the same constraints? Prove it... Have a go.

I really enjoyed it. Congratulations Simon Cox and team... looking forward to the sequel. :-)

turned it off

[aspinn-38771 · 2/10 · 2 May 2021]

The phrase its so bad it is good does not apply here IT WAS SO BAD IT WAS TERRIBLE do not waste your time watching this rubbish i wasted about 70 minutes doing so hoping upon hoping it might just get a bit better then i came to my senses and TURNED IT OFF.

Give it a break, definitely not that bad.

[future_release · 5/10 · 17 December 2019]

I really enjoyed the film. I just wished that some of the easier things to sort out had been, before release, like the poor sound. And cut out completely any VFX that looked dodgy.

The VFX range from amazing to terrible and stuck on.

The acting ranges from great to wooden as hell.

The story was different ( although full of holes ) but the dialogue was clunky and cliched which added to the woodenness of some of the actors.

Overall I liked this film I feel that the director should have stuck to just that and given some of the other roles he filled ( writer, producer, VFX, song writing ) to others. It might have made for a much better movie.

What?

[kazzieloo-23677 · 1/10 · 8 March 2020]

What idiocy from hell did I just watch? Save yourselves from this movie. Run.

God is (not) dead 5: He's an alien

[webhead-97553 · 1/10 · 18 March 2022]

What is the real motive for making this film?

This movie should be titled "God is (not) dead, He's an alien" It's Sci Fi written by christians who don't understand science or fiction.

It starts with a sunday school teacher, teaching her class about Noha's ark. A foreshowing of what the aliens are gonna do to us.

Halfway someone actually says "Someone is always looking out for us" (We can't rely on ourselves, let a higher power do it)

Near the end a priest sermons folks hiding in his church.

"We have lost our way... But don't despair. We have been given a second chance. A new beginning... ... step forward into the new world." While the Earth is being carpet bombed with nukes.

And ends with the aliens taking us all up to some unknown after-earth, saving us from ourselves.

Then someone compares the aliens with angels.

"They're angels, Tom, They must be. They're keeping us alive till they find us a new home."

Bad science: They nuke the SanAndreas Fault, and cause a chain reaction that spreads all the way to England.

The only entertaining part, is a commercial for a TV superhero "KALEIDOSCOPE MAN", whom the main character has a childhood Fascination with. But even KM is "A dead man brought back to life" Ke-rist! Save us from this 'Life After Death' propaganda film.

Garbage.

[silent_whispers · 1/10 · 4 July 2020]

Garbage. Utter. Garbage. I don't say this lightly either. (Trust me I have watched some bad movies. Too many.) I don't care what the history is behind how long the movie took or it's budget. What matters is the story. The graphics could have been done differently, the story is so choppy and doesn't flow. Which is a shame because I think the ending "reveal" and "idea" really was interesting for a bit.

The script and dialogue is bad, the acting delivered suffers from so terrible green screen work. Which leads to the majority of the movie having no heart or soul to it. I feel that at least they could have made this movie tighter by making it more coherent. Solid writing can save a low graphics budget.

In the end: Garbage.

7 Years

[andreibalas282 · 1/10 · 16 December 2019]

Besides the need for 7-9 years to make this movie , the writing of the script have missing pieces plus a wrong title. I understand there is a low budget movie , but it should have at least a good story line, but is not the case for this one.

Atleast she's looks good

[rexroatharrison · 1/10 · 11 February 2020]

10/10 worst movie I've ever seen! Please don't make the mistake of wasting you're money on this movie like me:(

DO NOT WATCH THIS

[chris-cl-lane · 1/10 · 21 May 2021]

I would rather lick the toe jam from a tramps foot than to go through that again.

Excellent mind twisting science fiction.

[eleanor-piper · 9/10 · 3 January 2020]

I really enjoyed this zero budget film. Simon Cox has created a film that takes a bit of thought and consideration...the same way you have to get a little deeper into Dark City, or Jacob's Ladder. (The best film of this kind was Arrival in my opinion.) If you like science fiction that you have to turn your brain on for, this one will be for you. Considering the budget, this film was truly something special. The effects were excellent. The sound track was excellent. And the story was great. But I like twisty convoluted films...a lot of people don't. If you liked Interstellar, you'll like this one.

Doesn't compare to a big budget Hollywood movie.. but then why should it?

[agentkmartyn · 7/10 · 16 December 2019]

The acting was average and the special effects were low budget but I watched this film to the very end. Why? Because it was so different. There are big budget Hollywood movies coming out all the time where everything is perfectly directed and produced but this is an independant movie.This was a breath of fresh air. You need to watch this to understand what I mean. For the first 20 minutes I genuinely thought this was a spoof of the sci-fi B-movies of the good old days. Then I realised it wasn't. But by then I was already hooked. I am now a fan of Simon Cox's work and really hope he does more. It's great that this is a British movie and that Simon actually achieved something that he's wanted to do for any years. Simon, please make more movies and don't change they way you do them. This will be a cult classic.

Dire

[californiazephyr94 · 1/10 · 11 April 2021]

I can't give it 0 the effects are so bad they make 1970s BBC kids sci-fi look like a Hollywood blockbuster.

A small step above Asylum

[fluffchop · 2/10 · 13 March 2021]

It takes itself way too seriously. That's it's biggest fault. The religious stuff is always tedious. It's got goofy CGI all over the place and stilted dialogue. If they made it a comedy they might have had something much better. I thought it was really unpolished in some parts. It took so long to get this done isn't an excuse, it's just the opposite. This should have been spot on.