We’re not saying that the Found Footage genre of films is dead or anything, but our friends over at The Asylum are doing their damdest to put it into cardiac arrest.  The horror tragedy that was ‘The Amityville Haunting’ was just awful, and amazingly this one here, ‘Alien Origin’ was even worse, despite the fact this one has a unique hook.  What was that hook?  This is a found footage movie in which the footage found contains more found footage.  The characters in the found footage actually found more lost footage.  In fact there’s almost more found footage within the found footage than the footage that was found.  Got me?

The Belize Special Forces Unit… because heaven knows if any nation needs a Special Forces unit it’s the sunny island of Belize… are in a training mission with some British and American commandos.  Chronicling this, documentary style, is some author whose name we can’t remember, but we do remember she has blond hair so we will just call her Blondie.  Why is Blondie and her crew documenting a Belize Special Forces training unit?  I guess because the Dominican Watching Paint Dry competition ended early. 

So our crew makes it the woods to start the mission, and they walk in these woods.  Then to mix things up a bit they walk in the woods some more.  Realizing that watching soldiers who can’t speak English all that well walking in the woods might be boring to some of us, they walk in the woods some more.  Eventually the soldiers run into a boat, which is odd since they are hundreds a miles from the sea, and this where they find their first set of found footage.  It’s worthless.  Completely worthless.  They walk in the woods some more.  There are remote cameras set up that get cool night vision shots of various animals standing in the woods.  Apparently the alien doesn’t like one of these cameras and he beats it up.  They walk in the woods some more and Blondie goes to sleep.

When Blondie wakes up, the soldiers show her some weird marks on the trees, which when translated from alien means ‘Get the F@%K Out!  I guess.  All I know is that this

required more walking in the woods.  This is around the time I started to zone out a bit, but I do remember the soldiers coming across a campsite and some more found footage.  This footage showed some archeologist walking in the woods.  Then walking in caves.  Then finding an alien skull.  Then running for their lives.   Now the mission has changed from walking in the woods for no particular reason to walking in the woods to find these archeologists. 

Eventually they find one of the archeologists who is one hostile female, and she wants to find her colleague.  How are they going to do this?  If you said ‘by walking in the woods’ you can now advance to Final Jeopardy. 

FINALLY, they walk somewhere that scares them all to death.  Hell if I know what that is since the Found Footage Cameraman sucks and stuff, and the alien has built in camera disturbance technology, but they are running for their lives and the soldiers are shooting like crazy at the trees.  Eventually they end up on the Alien ship, I think, because it looks like a generic computer data room to me, but this results in them running for their lives out of the ship and shooting at the trees some more.  Admittedly, at this point in the movie, I’m hating on those trees something fierce so watching them kill trees was slightly satisfying.  Unfortunately the action has shifted from walking in the woods to running in the woods, hiding in the woods and shooting at the woods.  Found Footage transmission halted.

Just so you know, this movie has a Bonus Found Footage scene where one of the archeologists, while standing in the woods, was explaining that these aliens are very similar to us since she tested its DNA and all.  Thus I’m thinking this movie is Mockbusting ‘Prometheus’ a little bit.  I guess.  I am a little curious how this woman convinced this murderous alien that nobody could see to stand still so she could extract a blood sample, but I’m not going to ask that. 

In case you haven’t figured it out, our problem with ‘Alien Origin’ is that it’s boring.  Check that, ‘boring’ would be a compliment at this point.  It’s sub-boring.  It’s mind numbing.  It’s Comatose Inducing.  If you are in a coma, and somebody plays ‘Alien Origin’ for you, it will put you in something beyond a coma, whatever that might be.  We can’t tell you about acting, or plot or story or anything because there was nothing to take note of, with the exception of watching folks walking in woods, running in woods, night vision in woods, then some fireworks in woods, followed by dying in the woods.  We can compliment the sets since trees are pretty and God makes trees, so the set design was awesome and the people did walk in the woods very well.

All we’re saying is that sometimes, when the footage is found, maybe it doesn’t need to be turned into a movie.  That’s all we’re saying.