ESCAPE FROM AREA 51 (2021)
Directed by Eric Mittleman
Written by Ted Chalmers, Mittleman, Carlos Perez
Starring Donna D’Errico, Chris Browning, Anouk Samuel, Chloe Amen
Running time 76 minutes
Currently unrated but contains bodies exploding and juvenile horniness
By Hunter Bush
In many ways I am much like Sesame Street mainstay Oscar the Grouch: I’m grumpy, I think educating children is important, I might be a Time Lord, and most germane to this article: I Love Trash. So when the opportunity comes across my desk (kitchen table) to review Escape from Area 51, a film starring former Baywatch babe Donna D’Errico and seemingly inspired by the Let’s Storm Area 51 movement, I’m into it. Sounds awful.
And it is, but in a harmless way. Are you familiar with the Kids Write Jokes twitter account? This is like that: yes the jokes are terrible; they barely make sense, they lack universal appeal or POV, they’re clumsily phrased, BUT they’re not hurting anybody and once in a while you get a chuckle out of one, so occasionally you toss a ❤ their way.
Escape from Area 51 is like that. It lacks focus, most of the characters are vague-yet-awful, the direction is sloppy, the locations are confusing and the plot is generic at best BUT it’s not doing anyone any harm by existing, I’m guessing it was fun to make and there are a few shining moments that give it some small watchability. Honestly my biggest issue with it is that it gives the impression that director/co-writer Eric Mittleman was trying to make a bad movie and that always rankles me. There’s a fine line in making art, it’s labelled “not giving a shit” and on one side is that kind of scrappy punk rock ethos where you’re just chasing your bliss and hoping it finds an audience. The other side of that line is shit like Velocipastor where if you like it, great, fine whatever, but if you don’t then you just don’t get that they were making it bad “on purpose”. Escape comes dangerously close to that kind of vibe.
Shot, acted and largely written like a basic cable late night softcore picture, but without any sex to excise and thus no chemistry, Escape from Area 51 starts off as a faux-documentary about that brief, stupid moment in the discourse when some Extremely Online types hyped themselves into a froth over the belief that if enough of them did the Naruto run (or whatever) at a heavily monitored and guarded military base, they would be able to ...effect change? Steal a UFO? Matter? Something. This all came to naught, which some text on screen mentions, as only a few hundred people showed up and they were more concerned with putting on a bobo Burning Man than, y’know, getting executed in the sand trying to commit a felony against heavily armed guards. Some would probably say that’s the smarter option; I think it’s just a different flavor of dumb.
The first 5 minutes of Escape from Area 51 are a very strange guided tour style narration from an alien voice potentially explaining why all the aliens will be appearing as humans throughout the runtime (when not being clipart dancing alien gifs that I’m only 80% sure were supposed to represent real aliens) before transitioning to the documentary stuff. This briefly follows a handful of Area 51 stormers in footage that I think was actually real. Whether Mittleman was filming it in hopes of capturing some watershed moment for the human race or maybe he just bought the footage from a friend, it doesn’t matter because - we are told - “they all died, so we need some other subjects to follow”. That’s when we meet Ernest (Caleb Thomas) a vlogger (*) travelling with his friends Jason (Zeke Jones) and Molly (Chloe Amen) to the proposed Area 51 insurrection. He records a brief vlog promising to tell Molly how he feels. This would have you believe he is, if not the main character then at least the main human of the group. This will prove not to be true. In a stunning final moment reveal (that's sarcasm but I think I should have hit it harder), Molly ends up being adopted by the aliens in a move that I think is supposed to be empowering/feminist but comes from nowhere, makes no sense, and is entirely devoid of meaning.
(*) A brief note on the faux documentary angle. Once Ernest is introduced recording vlog number 1, you would think that would be a through-line but it’s not. He only records 3 in total and the gap between him recording the 1st and the 2nd is so great, and so much happens that he completely does not explain to his “viewers”. He’s just all the sudden talking about “Sheera” and “the aliens” and whatever the hell else but makes a point to mention that he still hasn’t confessed his feelings to Molly. Dude: nobody cares. Not your fictional viewers IN the movie, not the viewers OF the movie, and clearly not the three (THREE!) credited writers.
Ernest however is somehow responsible for a power outage which allows captive alien Sheera (Donna D’Errico) to titularly escape from Area 51, which somehow also puts her on the radar of her nemesis Sklarr (Chris Browning). D’Errico and Browning are the high points of the picture for me. D’Errico has an effortless quality to her on screen which projects the feeling that she was having a blast making this; being silly and sexy in the woods with friends. Browning also is really Doing Something with his performance as Sklarr. It’s quirky and honestly fun to watch even if some moments tread kind of close to Beldar the Conehead territory.
There isn’t much plot to speak of. Low budget horror movie fans will be familiar with the pitfalls Escape lumbers into: a meandering story that goes in circles with the occasional injection of deadmeat characters to increase stakes and give characters something to do. Despite the aliens having a bunch of weapons and abilities that can kind of do anything (teleportation bubble, torture ray, melting field, explosion beam, etc.) they all sort of just bop around the same cabin for a while and not a whole lot happens. The vast majority of the onscreen effects are some cheap, cheap, cheap looking gifs too, with the exception of the first guys Sheera encounters after teleporting out of Area 51: a couple of anachronistically hillbilly-esque potential rapists. The one, in the picture’s only really impressive effect, ends up a melted skeleton that looks like the Tarman zombie from Return of the Living Dead, except coated in viscera rather than tar.
The script at least pays lip service to giving the characters arcs with Ernest making a heel turn and all the sudden deciding not to believe Sheera without hearing Sklarr’s side of things, only to immediately make an about-face in the following scene and apologize for not believing her. I should probably mention to you since it’s so incredibly nuanced and subtle, AND fits into this story without a single rough edge (that’s sarcasm, did I hit it hard enough?) that Ernest’s arc (as it were) parallels the Believe Women movement and related current cultural evolutions. The only thing that saves this clunky social commentary moment is how little impact either thing makes. It’s set up and then resolved so fast that it barely makes a ripple.
About 20 minutes into Escape from Area 51, Molly asks “Is it too early to start drinking?” and I looked at my watch (phone) and it was 11:23 am and I said aloud “Good question, Molly.” Escape from Area 51 is amateurish, occasionally baffling and just doesn’t have much (aside from a legitimately very cool poster) to attract an audience, but despite that it ends up just on the positive side of that “not giving a shit” line I mentioned above. I honestly feel like its heart is in the right place and that those involved genuinely tried to make something enjoyable.
Escape from Area 51 is currently available on VOD platforms and comes to DVD & Blu-ray on September 7th
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