Saturday 16 September 2017

Ejecta

Ejecta (made/released in 2014) is about a mythical blogger obsessed with extra-terrestrial activity and his fanboy companion, who together encounter a threatening lifeform from the stars, the story being intercut with the blogger's subsequent capture by a hostile authoritarian organisation who are willing to torture him to acquire the details of his mysterious experience.

Occasionally an underdog comes along that you've never heard of, turning out to be an undiscovered classic that blows you out of your recliner, leaving you with an inert smile pasted across your face for days.  Unfortunately, it was not this occasion.  Ejecta is science fiction produced on the very cheap, although I would never hold that specific characteristic against a film.  The greater sin that it is thoroughly uninteresting and the viewer may find it difficult to engage with anything that happens on screen.  Odd-looking Julian Richings puts in a reasonable performance as the disturbed blogger, countered by the cringe-worthy take on a nutty woman in charge by Lisa Houle, who appears to be attempting to emulate John Travolta's headcase character performances (which always annoyed me anyway).  There is a lot of dark scenery and plenty of not-particularly-appealing wobbly camerawork no doubt designed to trick the viewer into thinking the production is bigger than a couple of rooms and some woodland, but there will be few who are fooled.  I looked at director Chad Archibald's filmography on IMDb, and aside from The Heretics from 2017, which sounds potentially interesting, there is nothing else much good by him to seek out by the looks of it.
Released by Signature in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray, I viewed the latter to find an average image that probably recreates its digital origins accurately enough, demonstrating multiple aspect ratios intended to reflect different types of footage.  The stereo soundtrack is serviceable and there are, perhaps mercifully, no extras.  If you must buy the film you may as well pick it up on Blu-ray because it's generally as low-priced as the DVD and in fact I bought it for less than most people will have paid for the DVD (it turns up in Poundland occasionally, which is more than its worth).  Better things have emerged from Canada, and this is eighty soul destroying minutes that I have lost forever!

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