THE SECOND ARRIVAL aka ARRIVAL II - 1998
Live Entertainment,
Orion Pictures, Artisan Entertainment
Rated: Australia: M / Portugal: M/12 / Spain: 7 / UK: 15 / USA: PG-13 |
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This is a sequel to THE ARRIVAL, where aliens arrived
on Earth. Does this title mean they left and then came back? Or did they
never leave in which case the title should be THE REMAINING or THE STILL
HERE or THE YOU THOUGHT WE LEFT BUT WE WERE HIDING BEHIND THE COUCH THE
WHOLE TIME? Is an accurate title too much to ask?
THE SECOND ARRIVAL was directed by Kevin Tenney (ENDANGERED
SPECIES, WITCHBOARD, WITCHBOARD 2, THE CELLAR, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS)
and written by Mark David Perry (CAPTIVE [TV]). The story follows Jack
Addison (Patrick Muldoon: STARSHIP
TROOPERS, STIGMATA) who works for the Canadian equivalent of NASA. Jack turns
out to be the estranged stepbrother of Zane Zaminski (played
by Charlie Sheen in THE ARRIVAL), the guy who uncovered an alien
conspiracy to “terraform” the Earth, exterminate humanity and
generally be evil. A news bulletin informs Jack and us that Zane has been
found dead in Alaska and that he's famous for what people call the “UFO hoax”.
Jack goes to a local bar to drown his sorrows and gets hit on by a pretty brunette
named Sandra (Catherine Blythe: SHAPESHIFTER, THE
LEGEND OF GATOR FACE, TEKWAR [TV]) who claims to live in Jack's
building even though he never noticed her. How fortuitous.
Jumping in the sack with Sandra makes Jack skip going through his mail (Kudos
to Sandra for a nice full frontal, by the way). He doesn't notice until much later that he's received a large envelope from
Zane containing a detailed description of the entire alien conspiracy.
Similar envelopes are received by a short list of other people, including
scientist Nelson Zarcoff (Michael Sarrazin: FRANKENSTEIN
[TV], EYE OF THE CAT, FEAR DOT COM)
and reporter Bridget Riordan (Jane Sibbett: THE
RESURRECTED). The envelopes also contain instructions for everyone
to get together to examine a piece of alien technology.
Jack goes to the meeting but mostly out of respect for his dead brother. He doesn't
buy any of this alien invasion nonsense and isn't shy about letting
the others know. The meeting takes place inside a walk-in freezer because
it was established in the first film that the aliens don't handle
cold well – that's why they're accelerating global warming.
The alien technology (a sort of hologram projector / computer)
combined with one member of the group turning out not to be who they seemed
completely turns Jack around on the subject of this alien stuff, which
brings me to something I didn't like here and that bothers me in
many movies: inconsistent strength. First we see an alien that is strong
enough to twist a large screwdriver into a knot but seconds later the
alien is weak enough for an ordinary human to wrestle him to the ground.
If I could do that to a screwdriver ain't no way anybody would wrestle
me to the ground.
So now Jack and his new sarcastic friend Bridget are believers and the usual conspiracy
machinery starts in motion: they end up wanted by the law and have all
their credit cards cancelled. Something else that bothered me here is
that for an advanced civilization with interstellar technology, the aliens
are a bunch of Keystone Kops when it comes to killing people. Humans are
fragile creatures and we expire fairly easily.
And since I'm in a pointing-out-mistakes frame of mind I guess this is a good
time for a
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
I don't care if you are a 12th level hacker with a +1 slide rule,
you are not gonna hack the alien mainframe. Forget about the fact that
all the code would be utterly meaningless to you, although that's
a pretty good reason. You won't be able to do it for the same reason
an ENIAC programmer from the 1950's couldn't hack into my PC.
My desktop is so vastly more advanced and so completely different from
the computer he worked on that his skills simply don't apply. And
that's a mere 50 years of difference. A culture that builds starships
would be orders of magnitude more advanced.
THE ARRIVAL was a decent flick and a decent sequel would have been welcome. This is
not it. THE SECOND ARRIVAL is an attempt to tell the same story over again
with a lower budget and less talented actors. I give it two shriek girls.
This review
copyright 2004 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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