Ten Days of Terror!: Altered

Film: Altered
Format: Internet video on Fire!

One of the constant problems of watching movies based on a list is that some of the movies will be incredibly difficult to find. I only got through the 1001 Movies list thanks to the fact that NetFlix was still sending out discs in the mail at the time, the catalogs of multiple local libraries, and the assistance of other people working on the same list of movies. While there are more streaming outlets these days, there are fewer other options. And, to be fair, a lot of movies would be easier to find if I was willing to pay to stream them. So, when I find something free on YouTube or DailyMotion, I’m going to watch. In this case, alien science fiction/horror movie Altered showed up on YouTube, so I took the opportunity to cross it off the list.

Altered has some real connection to any film that features any sort of alien attacker, but to me, it felt a great deal like Fire in the Sky. This isn’t aliens invading, as in Signs, but people dealing with abduction and a significant amount of body horror. This is far more a horror movie than it is a science fiction movie. There wouldn’t be a huge difference in how this film works if you turned the alien into a werewolf.

We’re going to start with three men out in the middle of nowhere. These are Cody (Paul McCarthy-Boyington), Otis (Michael C. Williams), and Duke (Brad William Henke). It’s not clear at first what they are hunting, but after a few misadventures, they finally corral a creature, though not before Duke sets foot in a bear trap. It’s not clear immediately, but it’s soon evident that what they have caught is an alien.

The three take the alien they have captured to the house of Wyatt (Adam Kaufman), a former friend who now lives in the woods like a recluse with his girlfriend Hope (Catherine Mangan). As it happens, Wyatt was once abducted along with the other three and a fifth man who didn’t survive the ordeal. What follows is a series of escalating problems as the four men and Hope attempt to deal with the creature they have captured, that while somewhat incapacitated, has a number of tricks and tools at its disposal.

One of the mainstays of this genre is that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, While our humans are definitely fighting against this creature that has the ability to take over their minds, and infect them with a bite, they will also spend a good amount of time fighting among themselves, as they each have different goals and desires for what they want to do to the alien they have captured.

All of that is horror mainstay, of course, and if you expected that the people self-destructing and hurting each other was going to be what the film is about, you are vastly underestimating what Eduardo Sánchez was hoping to do with Altered. This is purely body horror far more than it’s an alien invasion movie. This movie exists so that we can see a couple of characters literally disemboweled and another one rot apart after being bitten by the captive alien. This is what we’re here for much more than we’re here for the sort of paranoia fights that this genre always comes with.

The practical effects are gory as hell, but are clearly practical effects. What’s surprising in Altered is that the performances are pretty good from a crew of almost entirely unknown actors aside from James Gammon, who plays the local sheriff. Gammon is immediately recognizable as the manager from Major League, and he’s equally curmudgeonly here and effective in the role.

I’m not sure what I expected with Altered. Co-writer and director Sánchez is best known for The Blair Witch Project, and while this isn’t going to take over as the most famous thing he’s done, it’s a solid film with a surprising amount going for it. Sure, there are some holes in the plot (we never find out why one of the characters seems to have immunity from what the aliens do, for instance), but in the moment, that’s not something that will take up space in the viewer’s mind. Altered is well acted, has fun effects, and is gory to a fault. For many a horror fan, you could do a lot worse.

Why to watch Altered: It’s every alien invasion movie you’ve seen, but with a lot more gore and body horror.
Why not to watch: As usual, everyone makes the wrong choices all of the time.