Decoys 2: The Second Seduction (2007)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

  
COMPANY: Decoys Production

RUNTIME: 94 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: The sexy alien invasion force returns to Earth to carry out the same plan as in the first movie, but this time at a different university, located in a different city, and with an updated plan of attack.

REVIEW: Shortly after posting my review of the first Decoys movie, it was brought to my attention that there actually is a sequel to Decoys out there, so I scrambled to get my hands on a copy. As soon as I did, I popped it in, anxious to view the next chapter in this awesomely-campy Canadian sci-fi/comedy series.

Despite the basic plot sounding like a carbon copy repeat of the first movie – it's really not. This one manages to take the same plot, but do completely different stuff with it, which both worked and didn't work, depending on the part of the movie.

With this taking place at a different school in a different part of Canada, we're introduced to a whole new cast of characters for this movie. We've got the main lead and his dorky best female friend who's pretty much just a copy of the same kind of character from the first movie down to a T – she even has feelings for the main character but he doesn't realize it himself. There's also a trio of his friends who are gamer nerds, with one or two being jock-types. They all start a kind of secret tournament to see which one of the group can rack up 'the most points' by how many girls they can sleep with, leading up a big annual End of Semester campus party. There's not much more to really say about any of these characters as they're all pretty bland and forgettable. One of the things I mentioned in my review of the first movie is that in many movies like this, despite saying and showing us that these people are best friends, they do a piss poor job of actually portraying it. This would be one such movie, as I didn't believe for a second that any of this group would possibly be friends with each other. They all have zero chemistry together. Although I was happy to see that more of them join the main character this time around in his fight against the aliens, as opposed to the first movie where that guy was mostly going solo in his attack the entire time.

Other then the lead teens, I was quite surprised that a couple of the new, more-aged characters, were actually played by some pretty well-established actors. We've got Dina Meyer  (Starship Troopers. Saw series) as a psychiatrist and Tobin Bell (Boogyman 2, Saw series) as the University's science professor, although it's quite hard to get past his role of Jigsaw from the Saw movies every time he speaks. While neither have any large amount of screen time, they do get a decent amount and have some interesting things to do. Certainly more interesting then the two cops from the first movie, that's for sure. Also surprisingly, and very-much welcomed, are two actors from the first movie back to reprise their roles. There's Kim Poirier back as the leading sexy alien babe (she was the one sexy alien babe interested in the lead character's best friend in the first movie), however in this one she doesn't play exactly the same character. If you remember, she died in the first movie so this time it's simply a new, much more vicious, alien just using the same human skin design as a way to screw with someone's head. This time around, instead of being one of the little worker bees out trying to get laid by someone in the student body of the university, she instead works undercover as a newly-transferred doctor/psychiatrist at the hospital that makes visits to the school to keep an eye on everything, and is seemingly in-charge of this nest of sexy alien babes. The Mother of them, if you will. And while she doesn't have a whole lot to do during the movie beyond spy on one of the characters from a distance and do various things to screw with his mind, she does end up being the 'final boss' of the movie, so to speak, and was quite enjoyable in that fashion.

Accompanying her is also Corey Sevier back as an older, slightly more-crazy Luke, the lead character from the first movie. If you remember in my review of that movie, I said I was hoping he and his tomboy female friend would return for any future sequels, and I got half of that wish come true. He's far less dorky this time around and much more composed and intense, showing some decent character growth from the first movie, and while he plays a bit smaller of a role this time (more of a supporting character then a main one), I'm fine with it due to the way he plays it. He has the scattered appearance throughout the first part of the movie as Tobin Bell's teacher assistant, a scene or two with his shrink (played by Dina Meyer) since he's currently plagued by many sleepless nights and daytime nightmares due to the events of the first movie and due to Kim Poirier's new character messing with his head unbeknowest to him, and then a scene or two of him suspecting that something isn't right around campus and looking into it. He doesn't really get a chance to truly shine until about half an hour from the end when he comes across Kim Poirier's character face-to-face in the flesh and realizes that he was right about the alien invasion, and that he's not crazy. He then saves the current cast of main characters from a raging alien attack like the complete bad ass he's become between movies, then proceeds to drop some knowledge on them about the invading aliens and trains them in awesome sexy alien babe-dispatching methods. The only disappointing thing about his return is that the female character from the first movie that ended up with him at the end of that one is nowhere to be found, and her absence is never addressed, which is unusual given what happened at the end of the first movie. The scene itself is addressed, but not what happened to her, or where she is now.

And of course I have to mention the sexy blond alien babes once again. Everything established about their species in the first movie is carried over here and also further-expanded upon. So often when a series is handed over to someone new, they tend to either change or outright ignore certain rules, so it's nice to see that these people pay respect to what has already been established. Of course we have plenty of nude and barely-clothed scenes with them in it – possibly even more then the first movie had, but we also get the nice addition of them wearing certain, um, fantasy clothing in some scenes, thanks to a new power of theirs that wasn't on-display on the first movie. Also, where the first movie portrayed the aliens in almost a victim kind of way and made you really care for them and kind of understand why they're doing what they're doing, this time around the aliens are portrayed as vicious evil bitches that must be stopped at all costs. The change is a bit jarring at first but after thinking about it, I'm perfectly fine with it. Like I said above, this movie takes the same plot as the first, but does it's own stuff with it to make it enough of a separate entity to be worth your time, and this is just one of the things it does to make itself different. Plus it creates more situations were we get better, and longer, looks at the aliens in their true alien forms – and they look simply bad ass. Props off to the creature designer of this movie, because he did an excellent job with the special effects for the aliens, even making two or three different designs, depending on the character. In the first movie you only ever got a few very quick glances at the creatures, and when you did you could tell they just used the exact same CGI model for every single one, but in this one we get some good practical man-in-suit shots, and a couple different designs at that. And lastly, where the nest of them failed in the first movie by bringing too much attention to themselves due to leaving the dead bodies everywhere, the nest in this one is much more smart and they make sure to get rid of the dead bodies themselves, leaving no evidence around to cause suspicion of their activities, which actually becomes a plot point when Luke from the first movie starts suspecting something isn't right and tries looking into it and warn people about it.

While the acting isn't anything to write home about, it must be noted that it is improved from the first movie, even by the returning actors. Of course, by having veterans such as Dina Meyer and Tobin Bell in your movie, that certainly helps to elevate the bar a bit. Another improvement comes by way of the special effects. Like I already mentioned, in the first movie everything was done with quick CGI and this time around we get a lot more practical physical effect shots, and because of that, we get longer, better, shots of them. The aliens themselves, their tentacles as they burst out of the stomachs of their human forms, all of it just looks so much better this time around. Even the small amount of shots that are CGI are done with better, upgraded, effects.

Not everything was peaches and cream though. The biggest fault of this movie isn't that the characters were uninteresting and bland, like I touched on above. No, it's that for the majority of it – it was just plain boring. Not a whole lot really happens for quite a large portion of it. And even that wouldn't be too bad if the movie took that slow pace to have some good character-building scenes like the first did, but they didn't. By the end of the movie, I didn't give two shits about any of the new characters, with most of them being not only forgettable, but largely annoying to boot. The movie is actually a bit shorter then the first yet while watching it, it feels so much longer. Once things finally get going though, it does try to return to the campy fun that the first movie captured so well, but doesn't quite reach the level of camp that that one held. Absent are the cheesy memorable one-liners and dialog that was on display in the first movie. “You were right. There ARE blond aliens on campus!” is the best one in the movie, and really, one of the only ones. This movie actually plays itself off as more straight and serious for the majority of it then even the first half of the first movie did, which I'm not a fan of simply because my favorite stuff from that one were the more over-the-top campy scenes, and it's important that a movie of this kind doesn't try to take itself too seriously, and this one seemed to be on the edge of doing just that. However, there were a couple scenes towards the end where things seemed like they could be headed in a more campy, comedic direction. For example, there was a scene where they used the main human girl to scan the dance floor to try to determine which girls were aliens since she wouldn't be fooled by the hormones they gave off. The music used, mixed with how the character was portrayed for that scene, really made it quite funny. Another scene would be shortly after that part, when the group of them all gear up with various home-made heat weapons to fight off the aliens with. And of course there was the scene where Luke from the first movie was going all crazy in the hospital upon seeing Kim Poirier's character for the first time in this movie. Unfortunately, despite these scenes and a few other minor ones, it never quite gets to the level of fun or camp that the first movie had.

I was quite happy though to see that much like with the previous movie, this returns to the winter landscape that I so-love in movies and wish more movies utilized it. Also much like the first movie, there were some well-played twists in the plot that I didn't see coming at all, so kudos for those. It also did quite well with the added element of 'Is *insert interchangeable female character* an alien, or isn't she?' paranoia that the first movie never touched on but this one did a few times, and ended quite humorously in a couple cases.

So in closing, while a different crew made this movie then the first (different director and different scriptwriter), they managed to properly hold their own with someone else's material and improved many aspects, but lack of any interesting main characters, lack of fun campy scenes, and a very slow pace prevents it from being as good as the first movie. Still, while not as good, it still is good in it's own right, and did manage to be a worthy addition to the series all the same.

With the cliffhanger ending given to us in this movie, I would love to see one final entry made to finish out the story and end it as a fun little trilogy. However, since this movie came out in 2007 and it's now 2011 with not a single whisper of a third movie being made, I believe we'll just have to come to terms with the fact that this is all we'll ever have for the series, and we'll never get a proper conclusion to the story. (Hey, I suddenly just got an idea for a new SyFy Channel TV series...)

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Decoys (2004)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Téléfilm Canada

RUNTIME: 99 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A group of aliens, in disguise as female humans, infiltrate a Canadian university in the hopes of mating and producing offspring. It's up to one guy and his friends to put a stop to this secret invasion, all the while being suspected by the police for the recent rash of murders caused by these aliens

REVIEW: I've been having recurring nights lately where no matter how tired I am, I just can't get to sleep. I probably should go see someone about that and maybe get some sleeping medication or something. In the meantime though, I've been using my sleepless nights to watch some campy bad movie goodness. One of the movies that came my way via 4AM movie watching last night would be Decoys - the low budget Canadian answer to the 90's cult erotic sci-fi flick Species. To be honest, I wasn't looking for anything more then a movie to fall asleep to, but within 20 minutes I knew I'd be staying awake long enough to finish it, because I was having such a blast with it. Easiest way to describe the movie when talking about it to friends – American Pie meets Species.

Much like with Species, there's a horny female alien (actually several in this movie), looking for the perfect mate to father their offspring (anyone the aliens mate with seem to die before they can finish, so they're looking for people who can withstand having sex with them). And what better place for finding a perfect mate then a bustling party university where, much like American Pie, our main leads are trying to loose their virginity. Also taking a page from Species, these aliens can change between human form and creepy tentacled-alien creature at will, and do so whenever threatened or in the height of their sexual activities.

That's where the similarities with Species and American Pie end however. In this, the main human character is a bit of a geek who's best friends with one of the party-going hornball guys that one of the aliens sets her sights on. After witnessing some of the aliens change, our hero tries to warn his friend – and everyone else – but just gets laughed off, so he takes matters into his own hands. Discovering that the aliens thrive on the cold and thus are scared of fire, he sets out with a flame thrower on a one-man mission to save the world. And it's at that point the movie unexpectedly turns into a full-on comedy.

And that's the movie's biggest fault, if you ask me. Not that it turns into a comedy per sey (I actually feel that's when the movie is at it's best), but that it just changes gears so abruptly and so far in. Personally, I really loved all the comedy bits of the main guy running around campus like a maniac, screaming his lungs out, shouting one-liners like Bruce Campbell is going out of style, kicking down doors and firing a flame thrower to roast the alien girls alive right as they're about to have sex with some guys. But what bothered me was that the majority of the movie played it mostly straight, and tried to be serious to a degree (sure, it still had some silly campy moments throughout, but overall the tone was mostly straight), then there comes a part about 20 minutes or so from the end where it just does a complete 180 into slapstick comedy territory for the rest of the movie. It almost seemed like they weren’t sure how they wanted to proceed with the tone of the movie, so just decided to do both, and it's quite jarring and takes you out of it for a bit. Really would have preferred they stayed with one tone or the other instead of switching part-way. Reading other reviews online, that seemed to be an aspect that turned quite a few people off from the movie.

My other complaint is with the acting. There's not very many scenes in the movie, from anyone, that's well-acted. While that doesn't seem to be as noticeable in the more-comedic final portion of the movie, it's distractingly noticeable in the first half as well as in any scene where strong emotions of sadness or anger are supposed to be present but they're just portrayed so badly.

Those are really the only main complaints I have though; everything else about the movie was just plain ol' fun and I had a blast with it. As with a movie of this kind (I.E. teen sex comedy; erotic alien invasion), there are plenty of young hot women on display in skimpy clothing. In terms of nudity, there is surprisingly very little with only one scene at the beginning really coming to mind, however every other scene seems to have one of the hot leading ladies of the movie stripped down to her bra or other scantily-clad forms of clothing. And don't get me wrong, this movie isn't one of those that shows nudity or near-nudity just for the sake of showing some skin, with nothing else going for it. Sure, it does have that in spades, but it also includes other things such as interesting characters that you love to watch as the events of the movie unfolds.

First there's the aforementioned main character who can never catch a break when it comes to the ladies of the campus...that is until the overly-sexy blond alien babes show up and a one of them takes an interest in him. But as soon as he finds out the truth, he wastes no time in waging war on the alien species to save his school – and the planet. It's at that point that the actor's performance goes into 'over the top, crazy, and campy' territory, but in a 'that's the point of it' kind of way and made many comedic scenes in the second half of the movie pretty laugh-out-loud 'what the heck am I watching' kind of funny, and it's at these points that the bad acting actually helped add to the entertainment as opposed to distract from it like earlier in the movie. Then there's his party-loving virgin best friend/roommate who also gets himself into a bit of trouble with a sexy alien babe, only to not listen to his friend's crazy warnings and...well...that ends about as well as expected. However the death actually hit a bit harder then I expected it to, and I was quite surprised at just how much I cared for this character by the time his end came, and I didn't really want him to go. I actually would have loved to see him work side-by-side with the main character in taking down the alien menace, but oh well. His death is really what sets the main character on his path of stopping the invasion. He also gets his very own out-of-place slow song playing over his death, but it really came across as more hilarious then anything serious, and with the style of this movie being what it is, I have no idea if that was the intent or not.

Next we got the tomboy female friend to the main guy, who acts as kind of his partner-in-crime throughout the movie and very-obviously has a crush on him that he just doesn't notice himself, which ends on an interesting note. I won't spoil it, but it was definitely fun and I hope to see these two characters back in any sequels there may be, however I highly doubt it considering the end of the movie. Still, I can always hope. And speaking of hope, I was actually hoping to see her take a much more aggressive stance against the alien babes, since they were, after all, trying to sleep with the guy she likes; maybe a good girl-on-girl cat fight or something, but unfortunately we don't get anything like that and she remains working behind-the-scenes mostly as kind of this movie's Chloe Sullivan, and even disappears from the movie all together for a large chunk, which is a shame cause she was one of my favorite characters and would have loved to see her do more during the climatic final 20 minutes or so.

Rounding out the main human characters are the two cops investigating the mysterious murders popping up around the campus. Personally, I could have done without these characters. They were portrayed quite poorly and didn't really add anything to the overall movie other then more minutes to the run time. The male cop was annoying as all hell and the female cop supposedly used to have a relationship with the main hero, despite looking about twice his age, and like with everything regarding the cop characters – it went absolutely nowhere and had absolutly no bearing on the rest of the movie whatsoever. And the worst thing? The male cop is so annoying, I was waiting anxiously for his death scene – except we never get it. Out of the few characters to survive, he had to be one of them. Actually, he completely drops out of the movie until he shows up again for about 30 seconds towards the end, and not in any 'shows up at the last minute to save the day' capacity either. Just in yet another useless appearance.

And of course, there's the nest of sexy alien babes. And sexy is the best way to describe them. They certainly weren’t hired for their acting abilities, but in a movie where they play sex-crazed attractive women...I'm totally fine with that. What makes these characters so interesting is that unlike in Species, these aliens have a decent grasp on how to portray human emotion, to a degree. They're not perfect in that aspect but they're far from the monotone robot-like personality of the creature from Species. Actually, their emotions play a rather large part in the plot of the movie which is something Species has never bothered to really explore, and it's that aspect that really sets this movie apart from being 'just another Species clone'. We also get a bit of the backstory of their race and why exactly they've come to Earth, and more specifically, why they picked Canada. Sure, it's only a short 3 or 4 line explanation, but one that really worked for me and added a bit more depth to the characters that normally don't really get it in these types of movies.

The movie also has a rather well-written script. For instance, they have you actually believe that the two main character best friends are best friends, unlike a lot of movies that say it, and even show it, but don't do a good job of portraying it. It also takes some level of talent to make you care just as much for the invading alien species as it does their potential victims. This movie did an excellent job of making me care about not only the main characters, but also the invading sexy alien babes, none of which I was really expecting to care for. There's also some quirky and fun dialog thrown in: “She screwed him to death!”, “They've come to Earth to sleep with us and kill us all!”, “With you lately, it's all about cameras, conspiracies, and ass-kicking alien girls from Hooters planet!”, “He thinks you're part of a Hottie Invasion Force from Hell”, “That's it, ladies, show me your navels”, and my personal favorite comes as the hero bursts into a room of sexy alien babes with his flame thrower - “Belt of Orion? How about belt of O-Fryin'!” and then you can probably guess what happens next. The movie is pretty much filled with dialog like that, so fans of campy B-movie goodness can't help but fall in love with it, with a large smile on their face. At least that's how I was every time a character shouted out another such cheesy line. Add into the mix some unexpected plot twists throughout that I honestly didn't see coming, and the writer of this movie has got me as a fan for all future projects.

And to add to everything else as kind of the sweet cherry on top: Since the aliens thrive on the cold, the movie takes place in the middle of winter, with snow on the ground. I don't know why, but I always love it when movies take place in the snow – adds to the atmosphere I think. It's just a little observation but one that I much appreciate. And their reason for picking Canada as their initial invasion point is due to the infamous cold winters here, which I got a good chuckle out of. Sure, when you give it much thought it doesn't make any sense, since there are just-as-populated city locations in Russia that get even colder, but any excuse to have an alien invasion flick take place in my country is fine by me.

I'm a huge Species fan and while this isn't technically a Species movie, it felt enough like one that it satisfied my late-night alien sex shlock for the time being, but also did enough things different that it kept my interest in it as a separate entity and made me want to see more of these characters in potential future installments.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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