Alien Code

Cryptographer Alex Jacobs (Kyle Gallner) is recruited by a secret government agency to decode a message that they've managed to intercept from a satellite that has been sent from the future. After Alex has served his purpose, he is swiftly taken back to his former existence but soon starts to have hallucinations and starts questioning what he has decoded and who the company are whom have paid him to carry out the decryption. Alex soon finds himself being stalked by both the government agency and otherworldly beings in his desperate search for answers...

I actually quite liked the idea behind this story (the concept of a government agency getting their hands on something they neither understand or can control is actually quite amusing and for me I wondered if the film was acting as a worrying metaphor on the aforementioned elements). This is quite a good driver for the story and at the start of the film we witness a 'one man in peril' scenario that gradually unfolds into 'several people in peril' as the larger conspiracy begins to unravel. Narratively, it does unfold fairly well and moves along at a reasonable pace so it never quite gets to the point where it becomes boring, but it does come close at times which forms part of the problem.

Given the concept and all of its themes and ideology I did reasonably expect some exposition and analysis, but boy did they go to town here - and I don't mean that in a good way. A lot of the hypothesising was mind-boggling and the exchange towards the end was a little overwhelming - running with the food analogy it's a bit like someone offering you a tub of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream - you consume the first tub happily enough, but then you're offered another tub of ice cream and halfway through the second tub you decide that you've had enough and that you don't want any more. That's exactly what this film is like at times; it's almost like the writers forgot that it was a film that was meant to entertain and decided to turn it into some overly-complicated time-continuum seminar. Don't get me wrong I like to learn things and like to learn things from films, but I'd rather learn in small bite-size amounts rather than in great white shark style chunks. Unfortunately some of the narrative and directorial choices did spoil the film for me somewhat and rendered it far less enjoyable than I'd expected.

To try and an end on a positive note I did quite liked the story and could even see a bit of social commentary buried underneath the rather 'heavy dialogue' and in fairness I did think that Kyle Gallner was really good in the lead role (even though he isn't first billed on IMDB's credit order - huh??). Sadly though The Men/Alien Code is a bit overwritten and a tad over ambitious, but I've given it a pass as I did quite like the story. As I said in my summary, it's a lot to digest in one viewing so I may check it out again in the future and may understand it more on a second viewing. As it stands at the moment though it's a 6 out of 10 for me; watchable but not brilliant.