Mini Review - Australiens

I haven’t done a low-budget sci-fi movie in a while. Let’s tackle on from the other side of the world, this is the Australiens

This appears to the passion project of ArtSpear entertainment, a reasonably successful YouTube channel that does animated trailer parodies and other sketches. The brains behind it are Rita Artman and Joe Bauer, who also star in it. The budget is estimated to be around $20000 Australian, and whilst not a smash hit, it did get some nominations and awards at film festivals.

So, why am I bothering to even touch a movie like this? Well we’ve had a run of really bad, crass, offensive pieces of sh*t created by popular YouTubers, and this is something a bit different. This is an attempt at a sci-fi comedy.

When a little girl, Andi (Rita Hartman) has a close encounter with an alien ship and claims to have ‘otherworldly cognitive powers,’ she grows up to be a singer in a cr*ppy band and tries to use her close encounter for publicity. When the aliens return, and kidnap her mother, she’s convinced the aliens are after her and it’s a race to stop them.

The plot is pretty basic and stupid, but for a comedy that’s fine, that gives you more time to fill with jokes and character interactions. So, here is my rundown on the characters in this movie. Andi is overconfident, sure of herself and stupid, Cam is obsessed with filming sh*t and she’s stupid, Keith is a douchebag and a coward at heart, but he’s loyal and also kinda stupid, Elliot is a hypochondriac and also stupid and John is an alcoholic who spends most of movie being abused. I’ll credit that Bauer himself plays this role.

The special effects are awful, but then what did you expect on $20,000? But I’ll give them this, they at least try. We see the alien in its full CGI glory for a few moments before they revert to using regular humans in green makeup and we see laser effects and we do see an alien fleet, unlike Interstellar Wars. Hard to tell how much of it is stock footage, though probably quite a bit. 

So the comedy is the last major facet and it’s hard to talk about without spoiling the jokes (which is why this review is so short) and I do think it’s worth checking this movie out. It does take a while to get going as it sets up its story but once it gets going it does have some great jokes. The motivation of the aliens to actually attack Australia it well set up; there are multiple funny revelations, but the actual reason is hilarious. It’s very self-aware and tongue in cheek, something more of these low budget movies should be in my opinion.

I don’t expect much from a movie with this kind of budget, the cast are giving it their all, it made me laugh and the story was at least entertaining, if certainly not good. The jokes and dialogue work with the tone of the story and the characters, though a bit one-note, each have something to contribute to the narrative. The effects are terrible, but they got maximum leverage out of what they had.

Rating 65/100