Ejecta (2015)

Found footage meets threadbare sets in this modern version of the kind of thing Charles Band used to produce on a wing and a prayer (and a budget of about $1.99) back in the 1980s. In common with many of Band’s films from that era, EJECTA veers from the passable to the tatty, with flashes of something better in between.

The better bit of EJECTA is cult movie legend Julian Ritchings (URBAN LEGEND, SAW IV, DEAD SILENCE, CUBE and many others) who takes the lead role as William Cassidy. Cassidy is abducted by a bunch of military types and taken to a secret bunker (i.e. someone’s garage with floodlights in the background to disguise the lack of a set) after he’s witness to Something Strange falling onto his land from the sky one night. He’s interrogated by the overacting Dr Tobin (Lisa Houle) in an attempt to find out what he knows, despite the fact he has repeatedly explained that he has an alien implant. This narrative is broken up when a video tape arrives showing events leading up to Cassidy’s abduction, including the discovery of an alien that threatens Cassidy’s home. 

EJECTA starts off intriguingly enough and ends quite well with a bloodbath of low-budget but satisfactory proportions. What weighs it down is the saggy found footage middle section that employs every cliche that limited subgenre has already offered us time and again. The excessive wobblycam is intended to build suspense but is actually just infuriating as you wonder why the chap holding the camera doesn’t just point it at the alien that’s lying on a bench. There’s also plenty of nausea-inducing ‘running while holding the camera’  and ‘closeup on terrified faces at length while random noises happen offscreen’ bits if you happen to like that sort of thing. I’m being a bit hard on EJECTA because, with a running time of 75 minutes minus credits, the good bits are pretty thin on the ground when you realise they’ve had to be padded out with all the found footage to even bring it up to this length, and there IS something good in here. The problem is it’s so slight that only the most forgiving genre fan is going to get anything out of this.

Signature Films’s DVD and Blu-ray gives audio options of 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo. There are no extras.

Signature Films are releasing EJECTA on DVD and Blu-ray on19th January 2015