While white people steadily line up to fork a few bucks for the race-baiting Avatar: The Way of Water, a true Indigenous sci-fi flick came out a few months ago: the alien-infused, back-biting cut of Slash/Back, directed by the daring Nyla Innuksuk.

A community of wholesome-but-troublesome pre-teens are petering around their small Intuit town. Taking their father’s boat to a neighboring island, they have to fend off a snarling bear. But the animal is seemingly part of a cosmic invasion, beginning with small, cuddly scenes of true wildlife to extraterrestrial-possessed, snarling-spittle man-things.

After said bear is taken out by the girls, the aliens want revenge. Now inhibited the town’s small police force, they come after the girls — and these are no shrieking violets! They formulate a master plan: armed with a hunting rifle, harpoon and other tools of the trade, to take out the menace with extreme prejudice, all in time for the conclusion of the town’s community center dance.

A Native-twinged riff on malingering post-mortem possession along the lines on John Carpenter’s The Thing and other stalwarts, Slash/Back takes the changeling formula and breathes new life with the Innuksuk’s innovative story, set in a dying town where tradition lumbers forth and swings back with a sick crack — with, of course, an alien invasion theme.

Slash/Back’s leads — especially Tasiana Shirley and Nalajoss Ellsworth as two of the young warriors — are up to the task, quelling any incoming invasion with both their Indigenous heritage and their pop-culture breakdown, giving this movie another rung of the absolute ladder of total domination … with space monsters to boot. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Until Blade righted the ship in 1998, a curse hovered over attempts at live-action film and TV adaptations of Marvel Comics. Case in point: Generation X, less-than-lukewarm Fox pilot movie of the teenage X-Men spin-off comic book, then just 2 years old. Although full of special effects and ably directed by the underrated Jack Sholder (The Hidden), Generation X tumbles laughably in its painfully transparent desire to connect with a hip, youthful audience.

Six teen mutants gather at Professor Xavier’s gifted school to learn how to rein in their powers, using them only for good. Looking like an emaciated version of MTV’s Puck, Refrax (Randall Slavin, Monster High) shoots lasers from his eyes, while Jubilee (Heather McComb, F.A.R.T. the Movie) shoots fireballs from her hands. Buff (Suzanne Davis, Fear Runs Silent) is blessed with the upper body of Fabio, while the others … hell, I don’t recall.

Under the tutelage of silver-wigged vixen Emma Frost (The Apple dancer Finola Hughes, who boosts her performance via push-up bras, which made flames shoot out my eyes), the high-school superheroes band together to battle the evil, mad scientist Tresh (Matt Frewer, Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe’s War).

Although the kids are extremely unappealing, Frewer is the film’s true liability. Aping Jim Carrey’s Riddler shtick to the unfunny T, Frewer is embarrassing. He gets one good joke out of the hundred he spews over the course of the film, and since it involves the ugliness of the hair of the stretchy-armed Skin (Agustin Rodriguez, Strange Days), it’s a joke the audience had written long before.

Equally banal is scripter Eric Blakeney’s insertion of pop-culture references in hopes of passing the show off as some cutting-edge, in-the-know, hip-and-with-it flick. When Emma and her Irish partner (Prom Night III’s Jeremy Ratchford, whose Banshee possesses a sonic-boom scream) present themselves to security as “Officers Hootie and Blowfish,” the line isn’t merely stupid, but expired upon airdate.

If this pilot is indicative of how the Generation X series was poised to go, good thing they quit while they were ahead. —Rod Lott

As the South Korean blockbuster Alienoid posits, aliens hide their prisoners inside human bodies. Whenever those prisoners escape, in swoop Guard and Thunder to make things right. The sleek Guard is basically Iron Man with all right angles smoothed out, while Thunder resembles an overweight View-Master and can turn into a talking car.

Meanwhile (?), in the late 14th century, people tussle over the Divine Blade, a sword with regenerative properties and the ability to rip open portals in time. Never the twain shall meet? Not a chance! And to no one’s surprise, the melding of very different time periods (and the subgenres of martial arts and superhero sci-fi) makes for fun sequences — not that the film lacks in that department before a single dimension is hopped.

Look, a lot goes on in Alienoid‘s 142 minutes. Bursts of energy shoot from palms. Spiked tentacles whip this way and that. Kitty cats emerge from paper fans. Guard and Thunder have adopted a precocious daughter. There’s even a character named Dog Turd. One could argue writer and director Choi Dong-hoon (The Thieves) has packed in too much “much” for his movie’s own good. (To be transparent, its sequel was shot in tandem.)

Although not based on a comic book, Alienoid is assuredly influenced by Marvel, for good and for ill. It’s big, bright and colorful. Action and humor occupy a common space. Special effects appear no-expense-spared. But when spectacle overwhelms all else, as it does in a punishing 20-minute finale, your patience may be as defeated as the forces of evil. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

I get jealous when people talk about their “COVID project,” even if all they did was stream every episode of Columbo. I didn’t get to pursue a COVID project; I had to work, harder than normal, clocking around 97 hours the week that almost killed me.

All this to say, with Something in the Dirt, the acclaimed filmmaking duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson (Synchronic) debut their COVID project, one necessitating them to step in front of the camera as well to star. It puts all other COVID projects to shame, so hopefully you didn’t get to do one, either.

Scrappy, down-on-his-luck bartender Levi (Benson) moves into a depressing dump of an apartment in Laurel Canyon. Fellow struggling tenant John (Moorhead), a wedding photographer mending a broken heart, notes Levi’s unit has been mysteriously vacant for a decade.

While moving some of John’s old furniture into Levi’s pad as loaners, the two witness a paranormal event: the levitation of an ungodly ugly ashtray. With both men in need of purpose, this is all they need to fling themselves into a full-fledged investigation — and documentation on video — of Levi’s closet as a potential gateway to an alien dimension.

Like the conspiracy chase of Darren Aronofsky’s Pi as an indie buddy comedy, Dirt follows the neighbors’ descent into a rabbit hole, the design of which may be partly their own. Without spoiling the movie’s pretzel-knotted twists, Moorhead and Benson inject a vial of meta into the mix — one that already includes autumnal equinox claptrap, X-Files paranoia, Big Brother surveillance and cosmic hoo-ha. No theory is so half-baked, it can’t be microwaved later.

Original and unpredictable, Something in the Dirt somehow is able to feel dangerous while also being dryly funny. It also feels improvised, even though you know Moorhead and Benson plan their pictures to a T, pandemic or no pandemic. I may not be 100% bought in to their conclusion, but it’s tough to complain when your mind is blown along the way. —Rod Lott

Get it Nov. 22 on VOD.

To date, the strongest argument against the multiverse concept as entertainment is Intermate, a witless waste of digital space. It posits a virtual dating game, also named Intermate, in which players visit actual “baby universes” and make a random hand gesture that triggers ultra-euphoric mindgasms.

The attractive Desa (Lauren York, Airplane Mode) serves as the game’s spokesperson, but she doesn’t play. Except when she does, joining equally attractive friends (Kidnap’s Malea Rose and Hunt Club’s Maya Stojan) in a round that sends them to Earth. They’re stuck on our strange world when a pink-necked space repairman (Jonathan Goldstein, Body of Influence 2) works to disrupt the game.

Or something like that. Written in part by director Richard Lerner (Revenge of the Cheerleaders), the story makes as much sense as the game’s convoluted rules: zilch. If only the repairman had disrupted his own movie!

Don’t just take my word for it; on the movie’s own website, Goldstein calls the script “really dense” on a “red carpet” interview: “We were all trying to figure it out.” Rose echoes that, admitting, “When you read the script, you’re like, ‘What is going on?’ … You’re thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, no, this is bad.'”

Boy, is it ever. The sci-fi tale plays like a comedy, but Lerner’s Q&A on the aforementioned site implies its campy vibe is accidental. That checks out because the movie is bereft of a single laugh, through no fault of the actors. Okay, there’s almost one good joke, however unintended: The ladies go to a rock club named, judging from the letter-sized piece of paper taped outside, Rock Club.

I imagine the real fun is the behind-the-scenes story, as Intermate originally came out as 2019’s slightly longer Flashout. Three years later, it sports a new opening and is “sexier.” I assume the former entails the exposition-packed title card that works against its purpose of adequately orienting viewers. As for the latter, Lerner depicts each male’s climax with quick cuts of bikini- and undie-clad torsos put through a tie-dyed filter, while a closing-credits disclaimer confirms as suspected, “Body and négligée shots in ‘flashouts’ not performed by Cast.”

None of this is sexy. In fact, running counter to the Lerner filmography, the whole thing is nudity-free — exceedingly odd since it resembles every Surrender Cinema release, down to the questionable computer animation. It’s as if whoever funded production found Jesus between shooting and editing, thereby threatening to pull out if the sex weren’t excised. That’s not to suggest any amount of added flesh could keep Intermate from being less interminable. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.