Alien Hunter (2003)

An adequate Sci-Fi Channel premiere item, shot in the usual disused Bulgarian factory, this came out in the UK on DVD in widescreen (with a director's commentary!). After the usual 1947 prologue set near Roswell, it's mostly set at an Antarctic scientific base where a chunk of something alien has been recovered and is broadcasting strange signals. Burned-out SETI boffin James Spader is sent to investigate, and runs into Janine Eser, the former student who had an affair with him once, scuppering his career.

As usual, it's a patchwork of hits, melding ideas from The Thing, The Abyss, The Andromeda Strain and ID4. Artificial conflict builds up between Spader and cynical, jealous John Lynch, and the geniuses decode the message ('do not open') just too late to prevent breach of the object, an escape pod from a spaceship which unlooses a deadly disease that strikes dead some of the less interesting supporting cast (the familiar dubbed Eastern Europeans). The mastermind back home (Kier Dullea) orders a Russian nuclear strike to wipe out the facility and prevent infection, and there's an argument between stay-behind-for-the-good-of-humanity and escape-and-kill-the-world factions.

The most interesting moment comes when some survivors realise they are carriers of an alien disease as their presence spreads brown death throughout a huge field of genetically-engineered wheat. The alien pilot turns out to be benevolent but gets sort of killed, then the survivors are whisked away in a transparent mothership just before the nukes strike. Spader, having passed on the Stargate TV series, is back in the same sort of role at a far more marginal budgetary range. Directed by Ron Krauss, co-scripted by J.S. Cardone (The Slayer, The Forsaken) and Boaz Davidson (Lemon Popsicle, X-Ray).

First published in this form here.

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