If
aliens ever arrive on earth, all those broadcasts we have been beaming into
space could be a problem for us. They will either expect we will jump to all
sorts of awkward assumptions about probing or will worry we might start
vivisecting them in an underground bunker. This film certainly will not help.
William Cassidy has lived with a painful implant for years. It has turned him
into a half-mad shell of a man, but that will not stop the military from
torturing him anyway in Chad Archibald & Matt Wiele’s Ejecta (trailer
here),
which opens late night tonight in New York at the IFC Center.
Among
UFO geeks, Cassidy is a near legendary figure. He is not exactly a reliable
witness, but he creeps out everyone who meets him. The long term pain and side
effects from his prolonged alien contact, dating back forty years, has completely
chopped and diced his psyche. Although he no longer remembers doing so, he
granted UFO-chasing filmmaker Joe Sullivan (sadly not the Chicago piano player
who gigged with Eddie Condon) access to his spectacularly miserable life.
Sullivan
picked a fine time to start documenting Cassidy. In addition to the aliens, Dr.
Tobin, a civilian scientist working with the military also wants a piece of
him. She thinks he can tell her when the invasion or whatever will start. For
some strange reason, Cassidy is not inclined to be helpful, so she goes
medieval on him, using some special confiscated alien technology. Yet, that
implant might help keep his brain from totally liquefying.
Julian
Richings racked up the awards on the genre festival circuit for playing the
tortured (literally and figuratively) Cassidy—and not without reason. He goes
all in, freaking out one minute, gaunt and withdrawn the next, without lurching
ridiculously over the top, like an alien-abducted Meryl Streep. However, he is
about the only thing going for this film.
Frankly,
Ejecta is littered with plot holes
that are only made more conspicuous by the film’s fractured chronology. There
is really no logic to the confrontations between Cassidy and Tobin, beyond a
desire to make heavy-handed commentaries about “enhanced interrogation
techniques.” Lisa House’s Tobin is a ridiculous caricature of sadist villainy,
who just becomes embarrassing as the film wears on. It is even difficult to
follow the on-screen action when the film combines the worst of shaky campaign
and 1980s-style gauzy, neon cinematography, in the dubious tradition of Alien from L.A.
