Alienoid: The Return to the Future: ET2

If you missed my earlier review, I thoroughly enjoyed the first Alienoid movie last year. Why that flick didn't land on my top ten list for 2023 may be simply because I sometimes make faulty judgments in my annual "best of" roundups. And so, I was excited about the return of this sci-fi franchise: A world where human bodies double as ET prisons and robots work for good. Did I want to see more of the star-crossed lovers (Kim Tae-ri and Ryu Jun-yeol), the humanoid cats (Lee Si-hoon and Shin Jeong-geun), and the two comically cocky sorcerers (Yum Jung-ah and Jo Woo-jin)? You bet I did. I even welcomed the addition of a blind swordsman (Jin Seon-kyu) and the expanded role of his equally skilled descendant, a customs-officer/auntie (Lee Hanee) who's been waiting her whole life to fight alien invaders on behalf of our planet Earth.

Now, time travel movies are tricky. But time travel sequels that recount the exact same story while incorporating different elements are even trickier. Meaning Alienoid 2 does get confusing and redundant depending on who you are as writer-director Choi Dong-hoon flips between the 14th and 21st centuries. New viewers will never truly understand all this business about the red gas bubbles. Old viewers are left to utter joyously "Oh, that's right..." as memories of A1 plot-points get triggered. Like Park Hoon-jung's The Witch: Part 2, A2 doesn't quite blow the door of its predecessor via a reorienting return. But a fresh coat of paint on something you like can sometimes suffice for an evening's pleasure.

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...