Area 51

Area 51

Starring Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg, Ben Rovner, Jelena Nik

Directed by Oren Peli

The Story:
Friends Reid (Reid Warner), Darren (Darren Bragg) and Ben (Ben Rovner) are your average typical guys, until at one party, Reid disappears for a period of time, only to appear in the middle of the road.

Three months later, the boys decide to infiltrate Area 51, because Reid has an unexplainable pull to it.  With the aid of Jelena (Jelena Nik) - a woman whose father used to work at Area 51 - the group prepares to enter the mysterious base, hoping to find the existence of extraterrestrials.  What they discovered instead led to their disappearances, and the film being the only record found.

The Synopsis:
Ah, "Paranormal Activity."  What a ground-breaking, revolutionary film that was!  And it was so terrifying!  Over an hour where nothing happens, followed by ten minutes of a few things happening, and then the last five minutes when EVERYTHING happened.  In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic about it being a revolutionary, frightening film.  It was neither of those things.  All it did was allow a mass of copycats to release their own "frightful" found footage films with shaky cameras, slow burns and an eventual final five minutes where you finally realize that the film should've just been five minutes long.

However, "Area 51" isn't a copycat, but comes straight from the horse's mouth.  Oren Peli directed both films, and you can clearly tell they are directed by the same person.  The same type of characters, the same typical setup, the same dull buildup, and the eventual quick-succession finale.  Also, I found myself drifting off to sleep several times throughout both films.

Back to "Area 51."  The positive thing I'll say about the movie is that it has to do with a very mysterious place.  Ever since I was a child I've heard about Area 51, and what they supposedly had there.  It was always intriguing to hear the different theories and suspicions that people shared, because no one has ever been inside Area 51 - at least anyone who could talk about it.

So, even though this was obviously a fake film, I was still interested to see what they'd find.  And I remained somewhat interested after ten minutes.  After thirty minutes I was mildly interested.  At forty-five minutes I was more interested in what I was having for dinner.  At an hour, I woke up.  At an hour and a half I woke up again.  Then the end.  I liked the ending.  It was pretty neat.  But a five minute neat ending a movie doesn't make.

The beginning of the film focuses on the relatives of the people who went missing, so you already knew they wouldn't make it.  So they didn't bother on character development or plot, because they knew we wouldn't care.  There's generic dude #1 - the one who organizes the entire thing.  Then generic dude #2 - the cameraman whose only purpose is to film everything.  Finally generic dude #3 - the skeptic who wanted to stop at every turn.  All are interchangeable, and I can't even remember who was who, and I just finished the film an hour ago.

So is there aliens at Area 51?  Probably.  There was in the film, if you count brief glimpses and shadows on the walls.  That's about as terrifying as it gets.  Which is typical for a found-footage film, the director couldn't afford to even have lame SyFy Original CGI.

The Summary:
Like with most found-footage films, "Area 51" tries to rely on the viewer's imagination as to what isn't seen to make it more terrifying.  Their only problem is that the viewer could care less about what was happening at all.

The Score: D+