Given Area 51’s title and creative pedigree, there’s no question of if aliens will be seen, but how long, and will the wait be merited? The short answer is “no,” which you might have guessed to judge from the film’s six-year sit on the Paramount Pictures shelf. The sci-fi/horror hybrid marks one of the more significant sophomore slumps for a 21st-century director — in this case, Oren Peli, creator of the record-shattering smash Paranormal Activity. Even with audience expectations calibrated to realistic levels, Area 51 emerges as a close encounter of the worst kind.

The movie finds Peli again toiling in found footage (whose second wave he ushered in with his 2007 from-nowhere debut), as an otherwise seemingly intelligent young man named Reid (unknown Reid Warner) ropes in his two best buds to embark on a ridiculous quest to break into Nevada’s titular U.S. Air Force base, long rumored to house proof of extraterrestrial life. Exercising an unhealthy obsession with UFOs and their related government conspiracies, Reid is the kind of anomalistic kid who earns straight As in school, yet treats The X-Files as something of a documentary.

Peli does his follow-up film no favors by telling us right away that Reid has vanished; we guess his fate (correctly, because it’s the most obvious choice) nearly 90 minutes before Area 51 gets around to it — and with some laughably bad CGI effects that ruin any illusion of the subgenre’s authenticity. As in the creditless Paranormal Activity, Peli painstakingly goes for that facade, which is the only legitimate reason we’d willingly watch so much of a movie through the limited, circular frame of night-vision goggles.

The main reason Paranormal clicked, I think, is because Peli really dug into our universal vulnerability while in a state of sleep; even if you found them annoying, Katie and Micah could have been you or I. Area 51 has no such relatability; it clicks only when you turn it off. Its measure as a disappointment cannot be overstated, as the project not at all boldly goes where every alien-conspiracy picture (and TV series) has gone before. —Rod Lott

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Escape 2000 may be the “cooler” title, but Turkey Shoot is the most apt. This Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks this bird exists, no matter the moniker. It is one insane Aussie exploitation export.

In the near future — well, 1982’s idea of such — democracy is, like the careers of this film’s leads, a thing of the past. Any people “The Society” deems as being among “malcontents or deviants” (read: freethinkers) are thrown against their will into a concentration camp for “re-education and behavior modification” tantamount to torture.

One of these tight-ship facilities — Camp 47, to be precise — is where Paul (Steve Railsback, The Stunt Man) and Chris (Olivia Hussey, Stephen King’s It) find themselves dumped so unceremoniously at Turkey Shoot’s start. The place is lorded over by the unsubtly named Thatcher (Michael Craig, Mysterious Island), who relishes the chance to espouse Camp 47’s credo: “Freedom is obedience; obedience is work; work is life.” And life here is short!

Catching me off-guard (no pun intended), the movie undergoes quite a change at its midpoint; not unlike a caterpillar emerging from its butt-spun cocoon as a butterfly, Turkey Shoot becomes a The Most Dangerous Game redo, now with a special blend of Australian seasoning. Paul and Chris are part of a tiny group of campers chosen to take part in a “hunt,” with them being chased by Camp 47 guards and their rich, equally well-armed Society friends. Thatcher gives them a three-hour head start and a promise: Survive until sundown and freedom is theirs.

Then director Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space) makes things get weird.

For one thing, the Camp 47 hunters bring in a ringer: a hirsute, wolf-eared circus freak who eats human toes. He/it looks like something mail-ordered direct from The Island of Dr. Moreau. For another thing … hell, with that, who needs additional incentive? Not for nothing did Mark Hartley devote a significant amount of his 2008 Ozploitation documentary, Not Quite Hollywood, to fete Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey; it’s intentionally and outrageously over-the-top in its violence, yet too campy to approach being labeled nihilistic. As one of the snooty hunters quips correctly, “Beats the hell out of network television.” —Rod Lott

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