April 17, 2023

Alienoid: Star Wars for Warlocks

Just like there are good humans and bad humans, there are good aliens and bad aliens. And good sorcerers and bad sorcerers too. In other words, the eternal, universal battle between Good and Evil plays out on multiple, mindbending levels throughout blockbuster auteur Choi Dong-hoon's deliriously fun Alienoid. What else can you expect when humans possessed by imprisoned aliens and aliens masquerading as everyday humans find themselves in conflict with each other, the law, and medieval merchant magicians who are also masters of mixed martial arts. That the film is able to bounce effortlessly back and forth in time — while throwing a good-cop/bad-cop twist into the mix — is another truly remarkable aspect of this irresistible sci-fi fantasy.

I'd also like to say that when a film runs well over two hours, I sometimes break it into parts, like two acts over two days or even a series of webisodes that'll last a week. But with Alienoid, I watched from start to finish as the interplanetary guard (Kim Woo-bin) and his sidekick "program" Thunder (Kim Dae-myung) handled everything from childcare (Choi Yu-ri) to spaceship dogfights to bounty hunting a rogue rebel in the present; and as a bumbling wizard (Ryu Jun-yeol) and his humanoid cats (Shin Jeong-geun, Lee Si-hoon) collaborated with a gun-toting heroine (Kim Tae-ri) and an odd couple of occultists (Yum Jung-ah, Jo Woo-jin) to combat the same dastardly extraterrestrials centuries ago.

Now about that ending...

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