Unidentified

**

The *road trip to hell* movies often wind up in the desert; or a majority of them do. It is the perfect place for all hope to be lost. It is the kind of place that if you get lost out there, the chances of help finding you decreases. Include government conspiracy, alien activity, and strange goings-on (including lightning storms, a type of icky infection possibly caused by electrical current sparked by “alien tech” that leads to a type of inner abduction and physical “disturbance”, locals “helping out” the aliens, and human enslavement with white eyes and glowing red lights on the back of their necks) in this no-man’s land, and there you have the perfect *road trip to hell* movie.

Yeah, this trip didn't exactly go according to plan

Ingredients for a sci-fi horror show all listed, Unidentified certainly has them in abundance but most of that comes in the final twenty minutes. Prior to this, Unidentified is a film about friends, about family. Two Asian-Americans, an African-American, and a geeky white guy are on a road trip to Vegas. The hope is for Nick (Eddie Mui) to reclaim a lot of money lost to his gambling addiction. He’s married to white American Janelle (Beth Aispaugh), and his brother-in-law is the dorky Jodie (Topher Grace look-a-like, Eric Artell), a cartoonist with his own youtube show he pimps whenever possible. Jeremy (Parry Shen of Hatchet) is Nick’s brother, while Dave (Colton Dunn) is a pal of them all.

 The road trip is supposed to be a simple “win lots of money so that life can return to normal” but becomes anything but that. It was even arranged by Dave as a “can’t lose” game where Nick sits in on poker with a “Down’s Syndrome” group with 20 K to hopefully double to get himself out of debt. No surprise: he’s unsuccessful. Borrowing some money even from a “loan shark” mafia type (that’s the kind of confidence these guys have), Dave equips Nick with the funds needed to win: well in *not winning*, the shark has teeth and the four barely get away from him before heading home. On the way to and from Vegas, the four pass through a peculiar ghost town; this has “alien activity” certain to involve them all in plenty of peril. Jodie, the inquisitive geek wanting his youtube channel to take off, fools around with an alien device that lands in front of him (it seems to be a type of “recruitment device” that produces a current that contains something which changes the human host’s physiology), and soon is infected by it. Acting not himself (often in a zombie-like state, with personality gone and eyes absent of humanity), Jodie becomes a concern for the others. He soon has a cyst on his back that, when cut, bleeds this black blood! With humans seemingly working in concert with the aliens (seeking help, our heroes make the mistake of asking for their help), it doesn’t look good for the cast of four by film’s end.

Shot in found footage format, through the use of a digital recorder mostly by Jodie, this plays like a “let’s record what should be a fun, cool trip to Vegas” document soon unveiling a discovery of sinister trappings in the desert outside Sin City. When an actual alien picks up the camera and looks into it, you know you are watching something quite different, which includes the recorder “taking a trip” where few have before. The cast is a likable bunch of losers, all rather unhip and in between jobs. The Vegas scenes show them as fishes out of water, not faring well financially. It is a bum trip that just deteriorates once they escape from the city, winding up in the desert near the ghost town they visit temporarily thanks to a conspiracy nut they met in a diner. Nick discussing his gambling woes often leads to his lashing out on others instead of addressing his mistakes honestly with himself. That won’t matter much because their lives are forever changed by the lightning bolt that destroys their vehicle’s battery.

As a found footage film, it has the same failings (seemed as authentic movements) often attributed to the genre, the camera unstable and erratic. There are the periods of inactivity of the characters on the trip, basically just doing what others would when on a trip, recorded. I can only imagine thoughts going off asking, “When does the film deliver the horror?!?!” It plays like a geek found footage comedy for a majority of the running time as Jodie is a source of amusement and aggravation to the other guys. He’s just a nerd with a passion for animation and desire to appeal to an audience appreciative of his own tastes. Soon, his plight is the catalyst for the remaining horrors that befall the group.

 The desert does look like a bleak and hopeless entrapment if you lose direction and have no reception to guide you out to civilization. Add this weird rash/infection plaguing Jodie, a weirdo at a former diner now essentially a mirage in the middle of the desert that doesn’t have anything they need (the person living there is rather unstable and on edge, wielding a bat and speaking in riddles about what lies ahead of them), aliens in the midst, and night time coming. The group’s situation is never much better after leaving that diner, speaking to the conspiracy nut, and going into that ghost town at Jodie’s enthusiastic urging. Vegas wasn’t exactly nice to them (Jeremy loses what little he has almost all in one game of Blackjack), and soon the desert will be even worse.

As a found footage “horror” film, Unidentified just doesn’t hit the mark. It does have the nasty cyst opening scene, but it is too little too late. As a found footage “comedy”, it has a cast of suckers who just don’t have luck on their side but aren’t particularly worthy of so much trouble that gets them by film’s end. They have their unique quirks and personalities (Jodie is the cast member with the most to offer the audience, due to his energy, nerdy references and behavior, and appealing in his willingness to gain close friendship ties to the others), seem truthfully life-long friends with each other, and stumble into their problems we see recorded. As a found footage “sci-fi”, the ending delivers (and the first visit to the ghost town is kind of a precursor to the final twenty that bookends the Vegas city disaster) to goods. All in all, the budget does the film no favors as most appears to have been spent on the special effects at the very end. So the first hour requires the cast to carry us to the last twenty minutes, with Jodie’s camera the guide from their humble lives in LA to Vegas where nothing helps to improve their current status. 

Marriages that are struggling, gambling problems, deals with criminal lowlifes, alien conspiracy, and a giant cyst with black blood: a busy plot for Unidentified. How does this all translate? I thought it wanted to entertain us, and the cast does try. I wasn’t annoyed by them, was amused at their relationships with each other, and certainly felt their dilemma in the desert was a rotten deal. The desert itself proves to me to be the film’s most frightening aspect, and Jodie’s mysterious fate and eventual unraveling of how he wound up in the current physical malady plaguing him was a big part of what keeps the film intriguing. I don’t think this is a big waste of time. It won’t win any audience found footage awards. I have certainly seen far worse (Knock, Knock II, comes to mind), and it has a neat little close to it that plays cleverly with the idea of “footage found”.