Review: The Blackout: Invasion Earth (2019)

The Blackout: Invasion Earth is a Russian film, dealing with alien invaders attacking the Earth. It's all a little muddled though, and while the military action on display is impressive, after a while you tire of the explosions, shouting and running.

Simplistically, the whole World is 'attacked' by some Alien means and plunged into darkness, all the humans dying instantly. This is, except for an area around Moscow ...

The army based there find themselves under attack from a huge pack of rampaging bears, and manage to escape. Then there's one of the aliens, Id, who 'speaks' telepathically (great make-up!) and is looking for his brother, Ra. Id claims to be on the side of the humans and will help them. Ra brings a load of humans back to life and uses them to attack Id and the army people ... but this fails and Ra is killed.

Then a vast spaceship descends, opens its entry/exit ramp and just sits there ... so the army group head inside to explore.

Reading that the film was originally intended as the start of a series makes sense, as the plot is very open ended and has much which just happens, making little sense, and just washing over you. The effects are pretty decent though, and I found myself wondering what they could have done with a better and tighter script.

The ending especially just hangs - the film seems to just stop - and makes little sense given what has happened before, and also relies on a massive coincidence, which is just not believable.

The characters all seem faceless and somewhat bland to the extent that I have no clue what any of them are called ... it just doesn't seem important!

As something to pass a couple of hours, The Blackout: Invasion Earth is distracting and diverting enough ... just don't expect anything on the par with films like Independence Day!

FILM DETAILS

4th November 2020, London UK -  A top recon team step in when an alien invasion shuts down the planet, in The Blackout: Invasion Earth, released by 4Digital on 28th December on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital platforms.

Imagine Chernobyl crossed with Battle: Los Angeles, with a touch of Predator, in this Russian sci-fi blockbuster that sees a future world teetering on oblivion. Featuring hi-tech effects, heavy-duty military equipment, bloody bear attacks and a suicide mission to end them all, The Blackout: Invasion Earth is a thrilling and chilling, action-packed epic that sees the fate of humanity resting in the hands of a group of heavily armoured, but massively overmatched soldiers (headed by Aleksey Cahdov, star of Nightwatch), and a lone female journalist. This is two hours of doom and destruction, intense firefights and mind-control mayhem - and a strange, leather-clad figure called Id, who holds the key to the blackout.