Alien Uprising has a group of young people in Derby who go out to a night club and get into some trouble. One of the group is Pierce Brosnan's son Sean, and he meets Jean-Claude Van Damme's daughter Bianca, and the two hook up. The next day, the power's out, and things seem weird. No one thinks too much of it, until the next day a massive UFO is resting in the sky. Now all hell breaks loose, as people are scrambling to get supplies and fighting with each other, while the army is confronting the aliens. Somehow Jean-Claude Van Damme figures in as well. Will the kids make it out alive?
And do we care? Kind of, maybe. There was one character I cared about, so I guess that's something. There was a lot sauteed in wrong sauce here though. First, most of these kids aren't worth caring about, and the movie wrote them that way, so I wasn't sure why I was following them. We also could've trimmed a good 20 minutes off the beginning and been okay. The club scene went on too long, the sex scene went on too long, the next morning stuff went on too long. There was a fight scene between Sean Brosnan and another guy that was also too long, but not only that, chock full of interspersed slo-mo. Like Brosnan kicks a guy in the head, and for some reason they decided to slow that down, only to speed it up right after. Was it that cool of an effect? Finally, the worst part--spoiler alert--everyone dies at the end. If everyone dies at the end, what's the point? Why put everyone through this if you're just going to kill them all off? We did have some moments of legitimate tension, which I think would've had more punch if this was tighter. I guess this is for Van Damme completists only, which is what I am, so if you have a review site and need to get all of Van Damme's stuff reviewed, it's worth it for that.
This is now 34 films for Van Damme on the site. (He has 35 tags, but one is for Post 400, the Van Damme Film Fest.) Can we get him to the 40 Club? Based on my math, we have his newest one, Darkness of Man, and then three others from the 2010s, which gets us to 38, plus he has some stuff in pre-production, so we might get there--though we know from The Eagle Path what can happen with those pre-production movies: nothing. He has a very small part in this, where he comes in at the very end as a former military guy who knows what's happening with the aliens. He sticks around long enough to have a fight scene with his daughter--so he's now had them with two of his kids, after having them in multiple films with his son Kris--then gets blown up by a laser from an alien ship. Again, it's just about being a Van Damme completist, and now I can officially say I've seen this and reviewed it.
Speaking of Bianca Van Damme (credited as Bianca Bree here), I didn't realize that this is her fifth film on the site. (If you're curious, Kris has nine so far.) As I mentioned above, she has a fight scene with her father, and based on her bio, she's trained in martial arts, so she may not have been doubled as much as I thought. Based on her skills and action star lineage, she could have a solid DTV action career, not just in low-budget stuff like this, but those higher-budget things that get picked up by Netflix or end up on Hulu after a short rental window on Amazon. Olga Kurylenko would be a good comp, but again, being able to put the name "Van Damme" on the tin would be a bigger selling point. You could also see lesser roles in big screen films the way Scott Adkins and Daniel Bernhardt have done, like a one-off baddie in that new John Wick film The Ballerina. Imagine if that happened, and Van Damme had to ask his daughter to get him on set instead of the other way around?
I mentioned above that we also had Pierce Brosnan's son in this, but I didn't realize that when I was grabbing images, I thought he was just your run of the mill 2010s bro dinkus type, until I started writing the review and saw who he was, and by then I'd missed my window to grab the images on Tubi. Throughout the movie I was trying to figure out what he looked like, beyond the 2010s bro dinkus type, and when I saw his picture on IMDb it clicked: lead singer of a third-tier 80s British pop act. And maybe not even an actual Brit, but like a Scandinavian or Northern European playing in the third-tier pop act. I wish the filmmakers had had the sense to let him run with that instead, just said "give us full lead singer of A-ha or Nik Kershaw. Just pretend I'm Russell Mulcahy and we're filming your latest video." That was the energy this film needed, and even though it wouldn't have gotten us over the goal line, it would've helped.
Finally, this film was shot in Derby in the UK. Not a place I've ever been to--unless the tour bus I took on my high school trip to the UK went through there between Stratford-upon-Avon and York, but I wouldn't have even known--but I do have an interesting connection to there. At the Goodwill here in South Philly, I found a Derby County scarf. I've probably mentioned before on the site that I'm an Arsenal fan, which started in the mid-90s after the World Cup was here in the States and I became a world football fan, I really liked Dennis Bergkamp, and when I found out he played for Arsenal, that became my team. Anyway, all I really know about Derby is from their Premier League season when they had like 9 points, which might explain why the scarf ended up at Goodwill, South Philly's lone Derby County fan was so disgusted, they donated the scarf, and it sat there for ten years, in among more fashionable women's scarves because the people who worked at the Goodwill didn't know where else to put it, and where it was ignored, until I was there with my wife and happened to see it while she was looking through that section. Had I known going in that this was shot in Derby, I would've dusted it off for the occasion. I saw that they're back in the Championship for next season, and I think those games are on ESPN+ here in the States, so that'll give me a team to root for if I follow it at all.
And with that, let's wrap this up. It looks like this is still available on Freevee, so that may be a way to make it happen. For me, this is strictly for Van Damme completists, and only the hardest of the hardcore of them at that.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2040578/
And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.
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