Invasion (2005)

Have you seen an Albert Pyun-movie lately? If not, then check out Invasion (or Infection, it depends on where you get it and both titles are fits good anyway) and I think you will be very happy. It obviously had a very small budget and don't expect any fantastic effects or mindblowing revelations about movie making, but prepare for an hypnotic and creepy sci-fi thriller in one single take!

Officer Brick Bardo (played by Scott Paulin, and the character-name is also one of Pyun's favorite-names, it shows up in a lot of his movies) gets a call to check out a meteorite that some old man has found out in the wilderness. When he arrives the man attacks him and gives him a bug, yes... a big, or a worm. Something crawls into his ear and takes over his body. He continues his trip until he found a couple at lovers lane, that he attacks. The girl escapes, steals his police car and now we follow her during the rest of the movie. At the same time the infection is spreading, taking over more and more people until she's all alone...

The concept with Invasion is that it's shot in one single take, with one single camera - the security camera in the police car. So what you see is what's happening in the front of the car. Nothing else.You'll hear the dialogue of the person inside the car with other people through radio, and on a couple of occurences there's also a picture in picture, showing the person handling the communication at the police station. 

Now, this could have been terribly boring in the wrong hands, but Pyun actually makes this work. I can't say it's boring, when it feels like something need to happen it happens, and the dialogue is not bad at all. It's sometimes a bit to on the nose, but to explain certain things it's something that's needed. The music is atmospheric (it sounds inspired by Morricone's score from The Thing) and spices things up during those stretches of dark road that has to be filmed sometime without anything special happening. 

What Pyun really succeeded with here is to show us how creepy a dark road can be. I don't like dark roads, and I think it's scary sitting in a car out on a forest road, in our own little island of light with the dark unknown around us. You always gets that feeling that someone (or something...) is watching you from the darkness, and that's exactly that eerie feeling that Pyun creates in this movie. One of the best moments is also when something ghostly is coming towards the car on the road, almost floating in the air, dancing a confusing dance. It's poetic and surrealistic, and make takes us away from the typical alien invasion-movie, but it's a great sequence and one of the best in the whole movie. 

Invasion is a pearl of a movie, a pearl that most swines just don't appreciates. But I do, and I'm sure many of you do if you give it a chance.