This one starts in Rome, with a Mandarin to Italian translator being offered a mystery job and then being picked up by some shady looking government guys. She is blindfolded and then moved into a darkened room in which one of the suits begins asking a mystery person questions. As the movie progresses it becomes clear that this is an interrogation, and when the lights are turned on (in a dumb move by the interrogator) it is revealed that Mr Wang is an alien.
'The Arrival of Wang' was directed by the Manetti brothers, and you can see the love they put into it. It is heavily inspired by the like of 'The Twilight Zone' and 'The X Files'. The Manetti brothers are very up and coming and so far have been creating their own take on genre films.
The movie is clearly low budget, most of it taking place in an interrogation room. The lighting switches between glaring dentist-style bright, to pitch black, with sequences towards the end including flashing red alarms reminiscent of the conclusion of 'Alien' - though in a nice twist she's helping an alien escape rather than trying to escape an one. The plane bunkery feel of the facility works nicely, it feels like I've been playing 'Portal' and have escaped a test chamber.
The effects on Mr Wang are pretty bad. They are of a similar quality to Species 8472 from 'Star Trek: Voyager'. More polies and better mapping is what's needed, and though it wouldn't have been so noticeable if Wang were kept mostly in shadow - as monsters and aliens often are is these sorts of things - but the clarity of his appearance is a bold move, and different, so well done Manetti's. Wang being on full view early on reminds me of the creature from 'The Host'.
So yeah, I think I've referenced more things in this review than I ever have before.
The movie touches on some interesting issues, namely trust, torture, and tolerance. What lets it down is its floppy ending. The twist sounds good as an idea, but was poorly done. I talked about the 'giving the audience the finger' ending that 'No Country for Old Men' had, and how it totally worked. It didn't work here. The directors seem to have wanted to show off their effects, but on a movie with such a low budget, effects are not something that should be focused on. I understand that it's not Hollywood, but that doesn't mean you have to try and be different with your ending, and it isn't particularly shocking anyway. It just feels cheesy, it belongs twenty years before it was made, and it's a shame because most of the film is quite good, and the Manetti's clearly had fun making it.
The Arrival of Wang: 38.0