Watch Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments For Free

How sad is this?

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

PHOBE: THE XENOPHOBIC EXPERIMENTS is your usual no-budget indie science fiction film that follows the misadventures of a bunch of military types on the hunt for a renegade alien menace. As usual it's shot in a backwards woods somewhere with a very cheap and dated filming style thanks to the analogue look. The film's biggest problem is the PG rating which robs it of much of the interest that a B-movie fan would have. It was made for just $250, so I suppose we shouldn't complain about it so much. The roaming alien only appears at the climax and turns out to be a guy dressed in a ghillie suit and papier mache mask.

Rough'n'ready renegade ex-military specialist Sgt. Gregory Dapp (dumpy John Rubeck, who rocks one hell of a wicked mullet) gets assigned to recover a lethal experiment called Phobe (Merv Wrighton in a funky costume) that has escaped to Earth.Despite amateurish acting from a game, but lame no-name cast, cut-rate (not so) special effects, and raggedy shot-on-video cinematography, writer/director Erica Benedikty's Do-It-Yourself indie opus nonetheless still possesses a certain raw vitality, lots of shoot-the-moon ambition, and a positively infectious go-for-it enthusiasm that's impossible to either dislike or resist. Moreover, the exciting action set pieces are staged with considerable brio, plenty of stuff blows up real good, and the pulsating synthesizer score hits the stirring spot. Hugely enjoyable.