Alienoid

I watched a movie last night that I can’t stop thinking about. Often if I’m still thinking about a movie a day or more afterwards it has to do with the message or some deep thought. This time it’s just because the movie was so much fun and so interesting. The movie is Alienoid, which is on Amazon Prime.

Alienoid is a Korean sci-fi film. It is also a fantasy film. It is also a wuxia style martial arts film. As someone who likes to combine genres, I was amazed and in awe of their ability to mashup all of these in a coherent and often brilliant way.

If you like weird sci-fi films, go watch it. There’s no need to read further, just take my word for it. There will be spoilers below and I think everyone should have the chance to watch this wonderful insanity without knowing why they should. If you don’t want spoilers, stop reading now, go watch it and if you still care why I think it’s a great movie (or think there must be something wrong with me to love this film), come back and read the rest of this post.

The story is told in two timelines. One is present day Korea, the other is hundreds of years in the past. Time travel is established as real in the beginning, so when the two tales are brought together in the end it does make sense. In the opening the alien robot who looks like a human travels back in time with his accompanying robot who is sometimes a talking SUV to capture an escaped alien prisoner. You know, that old chestnut. In the process a young girl’s mother is killed and they return to the present with the infant girl, because the robot who is sometimes a talking SUV understands humanity and has more empathy for us than the other robot. The present day storyline next picks up with the child being grade school aged. Meanwhile the past storyline introduces us to a would-be dosa, a sorcerer. But this one is less disciplined. A natural at some things he tends to get by on luck and ability and gets into trouble due to not taking things seriously enough. He also has a magic fan that he can summon images from into reality. For instance there are two cats on the fan, named Left Paw and Right Paw. Once brought into reality they can take the form of cats or humans with catlike behaviors reminiscent of Cat on Red Dwarf. Much of the plot of the past storyline centers around trying to capture the Divine Blade which turns out to be a power source for the aliens.

I won’t go into more of the plot. I think if you read that and are still unconvinced you should see it for yourself, there’s no helping you. That said, I’ll add that the movie has a great sense of humor, is well shot and delivers on all the action sequences, and even if it’s a little long at two hours and twenty minutes, it doesn’t feel like it at all.

For a movie with so many different genres working together, the world building is incredible. The magic system alone, it’s so well thought out and brilliantly quirky, I’d definitely play a table top roleplaying game set in the past version of Korea with the wacky magic and martial arts.

Some who know me may think I like this movie because of my love of bad, MST3K riffable movies. I do not believe this movie is of that ilk. It is weird to be sure, insane at times. The alien’s plan that the story is predicated upon is one of the dumbest goddamned ideas I’ve heard of in my life, though they do come to the realization that it was a bad idea, and in this era someone actually acknowledging that what they were doing was dumb feels in itself like a great achievement. But I do not believe this to be a bad movie.

If you want two plus hours of sheer crazy fun, watch this movie.