Stranded

A low-budget coming together of Alien and The Thing, with little in the way of imagination in-between, Roger Christian’s sci-fi chiller Stranded is familiar fare and unlikely to last too long in US cinemas before it reappears on DVD and VOD in the hope of grabbing the interest of tolerant fantasy fans.

Taking a leaf from the Alien playbook, a wee alien gets implanted in the uterus of a female member and before you can say ‘Prometheus’ she is ready to give birth.

Even the star-billing of Christian Slater (whose roles of choice are very much in the B-movie category these days) is unlikely to drum up much interest, and while Roger Christian’s notoriety from having directed the big-budget John Travolta sci-fi extravaganza Battlefield Earth may pique some interest the film has little else going for it.

Slater stars as the square-jawed Col. Gerard Brauchman who leads his four-person moon-base team whose lives are put into danger when a meteor strikes the base and life-support systems are damaged – as they often tend to be in such films – meaning the team have to get by until help arrives.

But guess what, there is a rather nasty spore that arrives with the outer-space rock and it starts to grow in rather surprising and increasingly nasty ways….especially when they make the mistake of bringing into the once sterile moon-base environment.

Taking a leaf from the Alien playbook, a wee alien gets implanted in the uterus of a female member and before you can say ‘Prometheus’ she is ready to give birth. Following the The Thing hymn-sheet the rest of the crew are stalked by a shape-shifting beastie.

The special effects are rather clunky and the script pretty pedestrian with by-the-numbers sci-fi horror thrills proving no substitute for a smart and knowing story or a sense of wanting to offer up anything particularly original.