The three titles getting reviewed here are actually new releases this week and normally I’d do a New This Week article, but it’s only three so I’m going Review Roundup style. First is Sting which I really wanted to like, but unfortunately it just doesn’t stick its landing. The biggest issue with the film is that there are huge tonal shifts throughout the movie. At times it plays like a creature feature and other times a horror comedy. There’s an old lady speaking broken English we laugh at, but then there’s scenes of family drama with a young girl, her mother and step-father. But then the creature (an alien spider) would kill something and it’s a cool creature feature. If it went 100% creature feature it would have worked completely. The alien spider is befriended by the girl in a New York apartment complex (which is clearly not actually New York), but the spider needs to eat and kill and that environment should have worked but the shifts in tone throughout hurt. The young actress playing the girl is fantastic in the film especially the third act where it becomes a sort of Home Alone (child vs. predator) type situation. There’s not enough blood and gore to really hold your attention especially after it takes a while to get going. The third act is very fun and violent, I just wish the entire movie dove into its B-Movie-ness head on and stayed in that tone. I can see it picking up a cult following on home video and streaming, but there’s a much better movie to be had here.
Second we have Alienoid: Return to the Future the sequel to Alienoid which I watched in 2022. It’s a sci-fi series where aliens have been secretly imprisoned in humans, but they escape and end up in the past trying to get back to the present day. My major issue with the first film is that it spent too much time in the past segments and at first I thought I was going to have the same issue with this sequel, but it actually worked out well. The film opens with a reminder of the first (which was good because I hadn’t seen it in almost 2 years) and we begin in the past. Then I got a bit confused as it suddenly jumped to the present day with characters new to the story. There’s a federal agent woman (customs officer if I remember correctly) and you sit there wondering why they are focusing on her. Then it cuts back to the past and the characters find a way back and accidentally bring some others with them. As the good guys and bad guys fight in the present, we figure out why the customs agent was brought in and there’s a big third act climax. I ended up liking this one more because the finale is more sci-fi and action based than anything else and it worked for me. If you haven’t seen Alienoid I recommend watching that first and overall I do recommend both films in this South Korean franchise.
Last we have Ultraman Taiga: The Complete Series + Ultraman Taiga The Movie: New Generation Climax the latest Ultraman home video release from Mill Creek Entertainment. Like Alienoid, this has aliens living amongst humans. Hiroyuki Kudo is the main character in the series and he works for a security agency that deals with alien and human incidents and he carries Ultraman Taiga particles in him which saved him from a fall as a young boy. The show then jumps 12 years to his current job at the agency. He fights monsters as Ultraman Taiga along with other Tri-Squad members. The series consists of over 20 episodes. Plus you get the Ultraman Taiga: The Movie: New Generation Climax which is very similar to the series with many returning cast members, but this time the enemy is Taiga’s father, Ultraman Taro. If you read me enough you know I prefer the older, classic Ultraman stuff, but if you have been collecting Mill Creek’s Ultraman releases then add this to your collection.
The Nerds Templar 