It's Alive (2008)

Released by: First Look Studios
Released on: October 6, 2009.
Director: Josef Rusnak
Cast: Bijou Phillips, James Murray
Year: 2008
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The Movie:

One of the coolest 'killer baby' movies of all time is back, with original writer/director Larry Cohen pitching in on writing duties… and guess what? It's incredibly bland. How on Earth the team behind this picture managed to take Cohen's fantastic original It's Alive and turn it in to such a milestone of true and utter mediocrity is a very good question, and one not answered on this disc (which has no extras to speak of).

The plot here doesn't differ from the first film all that much. A young woman named Lenore Harker (Bijou Phillips) finds out that she's pregnant, not at all what she was planning on, and so she decides to drop out of graduate school and head to the country with her boyfriend, Frank (James Murray). Now, anyone with any sense of self worth would stick it out and finish school, but this plot device at least gets our central characters out into the boonies where things tend to be spookier. Lenore does toy with the idea of getting rid of the kid before he splits her cooch open upon entry, but, well, it doesn't quite work out that way. No spoilers here, folks.

At any rate, Lenore gives birth far earlier than anyone anticipated and after an emergency C-section, in which the entire crew of doctors are killed, she names her son Daniel and takes him home. The cops, obviously curious as to how an entire crew of doctors wound up dead, launch an investigation while at home the should-be-proud new mother is wandering around cleaning up after her rapidly growing kid who seems to have a real knack for killing the local animals and leaving their bodies laying around. When she stumbles upon wee Daniel biting the head off of a bird, Ozzy style, she understandably freaks out and realizes that there's something very wrong with her child. When human bodies start taking the place of the animal corpses that she's been finding, Lenore starts to snap… unsure what to do about the unholy terror she has brought into this world.

First things first - Ms. Phillips is pretty good here. To her credit she plays her part with a convincing amount of frustration, confusion and sincere caring for her child. She never asked to be put into the situation she finds herself in and you can't help but feel for her. She does a fine job with the material and Lenore is a fairly well fleshed out and believable character. Sadly, you can't say that about anyone else in the cast, meaning Phillips is left to do all of the heavy lifting on her own and there's only so much she can do here. Daniel, given a considerably more human look here than in the original movie, turns into a killer CGI baby when he goes into monster kid mode and this isn't handled so well. The graphics work isn't convincing and as such, he's not scary. The concept might work, but the execution does not and when the monster in your monster movie doesn't work, well, you're not left with too much of a monster movie, right?

On top of that, without wanting to spoil the ending, the finale is goofy. There isn't so much of a twist as there is a cop out and while I can admit that some of the kill scenes are impressively gory in the last half of the picture, it all adds up to a predictable and unconvincing whole. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a terrible film - it'll kill ninety minutes without hurting you and a couple of inspired moments stick with you - it's just, as I said, very mediocre.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is good, if a bit uneven. There are some spots where black levels are a bit murky and the picture is interlaced. Generally, however, this isn't a bad looking picture. Color reproduction looks good and detail levels are okay. You won't notice much in the way of print damage or heavy, inordinate grain, but there isn't quite as much detail in the picture as you might hope for in a brand new transfer. Overall, the movie looks good, it just doesn't look great.

The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is pretty solid with some nice channel separation evident during the shoot outs and the action scenes. Bass response doesn't pack quite as much of a punch as it could in some scenes but the levels all sound well balanced and the dialogue is clear enough and easy to understand. This isn't a track that will blow you away, but it sounds alright. Optional subtitles are provided in English SDH and Spanish.

Aside from previews for a few unrelated First Look Studios release, this DVD contains only a static menu and chapter selection options.

The Final Word:

No one asked for a remake of It's Alive but here it is anyway, as middle of the road as you'd probably have expected it to be. First Look's DVD looks okay and sounds pretty decent but contains no extras. That said, it can be found at a very fair price. The curious can decide for themselves, obviously, but anyone expecting this to hold up to the first film can keep on walking… or crawling as the case may be.