Occupation (2018)

Plot of Occupation: In an outback Australian town the locals are stunned when an alien spacecraft hovers over a fair and rugby match and drones swoop down and decimate the area with explosive devices. Thereafter the area is attacked by armoured soldiers with full face cover helmets and some sort of ray guns. A group of locals form a resistance group and retire to the bush where they set up a temporary camp. Meanwhile the aliens have captured many of the locals and are using them as slaves to plant stuff. The locals make forays into the alien occupied area killing some and taking their ray guns. Finally they are surrounded by aliens but just when things look really bad they are rescued by a military force and join them in their attack on the space ships.

Content: There is one distant view of sex taking place, and surely there must have been some beer drinking, although I don’t remember it. Mainly there are fire fights of various intensity between the locals and the aliens, and when they are not fighting they may be arguing. Several standard types, the grumpy father whose daughter is a bit wayward, the druggie who reforms into a good guy, a few bonza rugby players, at least one mature but attractive woman who is an ace with a rifle. The aliens tall and threatening with their helmets on, bug-eyed monsters with them off, and I couldn’t help noticing that some of them were a bit chunky.

A View: This film was not much liked by anybody, mainly because there just didn’t seem to be any tension. It cost $6 million and apparently made $38,000 on general release, but I saw it in Spain so it has gone on to make a bit of money on video. I am often a fan of low budget films where the script has to fill in for the lack of money, but this film unfortunately failed on all counts, so not a watch even for nothing. Choose something else.

Fun Fact: (Just for Australians) Even though the name of the town is never identified much of the filming took place in Murwillumbah.