A film’s trailer is meant to be seen and help publicize it. So when a company disables sharing of that trailer you know even they realize there’s a problem. And that’s what I ran into with Alien Expedition, (originally filmed as Jurassic Expedition). I found it on the company’s Vimeo channel, but sharing was disabled. The reaction to it on a couple of sites that did have it might explain why.
Alien Expedition starts with a weird flashback/montage before jumping into some fairly aggressive and energetic sex between space jockey Mason (Edward Gusts, Snake Outta Compton, Stained) and bartender Des (Cody Renee Cameron, Girls, Guns And Blood, Verotika). Poor guy is barely finished when Fen (C.J. Baker) tells him the commander wants to see them.
Long story short Mason is about to get to lead his first expedition to a new planet. As much because of who his father was as his own accomplishments but he’ll take it. And he’s introduced to Aurora (Whitney Nielsen, Mercy Christmas) his new android Science Officer. We recognize her as the person having the flashbacks at the beginning of the film.
They pick up some dinosaur chow, excuse me, the security detail and head off. The planet seems pretty dull, all desert and rocks. Until a weird floating light lures Fen away to be beamed up by some unknown craft. After that, dinosaurs who seem to have Predator grade cloaking technology start literally appearing out of nowhere. And, btw, drinking the water will give you something worse than Montezuma’s Revenge.
Alien Expedition reminded me of the 70s film Planet Of The Dinosaurs. And to a lesser degree King Dinosaur from the 100s, that’s how old the basic plot is. And this film really doesn’t do anything new with it. There’s plenty of borrowing from better films, like the big black guy with enhanced vision (Antuone Torbert, Soul Hunters, Dragon Soldiers), giant sandworms and a tense confrontation about letting an injured crewmember back on board.