DISTURBANCE (2005)

Disturbance (originally and more accurately called Choker) is the very essence of High Concept. Think Silence of the Lambs meets The Hidden. And, it gets an A+ for moral ambiguity: its hero is a serial killer. Earth has been invaded by galactic scum wanting to take over the bodies of humans so that they can enjoy life on our planet. Host bodies occasionally vomit something resembling iridescent antifreeze, and sometimes this substance forces its way through the skin. These creatures need to be tracked down and terminated with extreme prejudice. After his (faked) execution mass murderer Hud Masters (Paul Sloan) becomes the host body for an alien consciousness willing to betray its mates. In one long Walpurgisnacht he tries to track down the remaining creatures, whether they're inhabiting the body of a gorgeous woman or a junior high school boy, and make the planet safe again.
The story is set in the mythical city of Los Angeles, famous for alleys equipped with lots of empty boxes to absorb the impact when people fall or are thrown during fights. Disturbance comes from a tradition of low budget independent film-making pioneered by Roger Corman fifty years ago. Its budget- $35,000- would produce 3.5 seconds of The Departed. It was shot on digital video with what looks like primarily existing light- one fight is very effectively backlit- and the colour is clear and vivid, skin tones are natural, pools of light and vivid neon are surrounded by inky blackness. It looks great.

The film, however, would have profited by being fifteen minutes shorter. A lengthy flashback- set, significantly, in daylight- gives us information about a secret government agency and provides backstory that deepens the development of one of the characters. Oddly, we view this some time after that character has been killed in the line of duty. Hud is played with quiet intensity by Paul Sloan. His counterpart is the excellent Hayley DuMond as a character identified only as Leader: she's low key and informs the character with authority and quiet menace. Writer/director Nick Vallelonga plays family man Frank Russo, top dog of the secret agency.

After so many films having dealt with conspiracies that are baroque in complexity it's refreshing to see the way the agency handles this crises. When a street corner is littered with corpses, agents simply use a cell phone to tell an unknown listener to "send clean-up". At one point Hud is under arrest. Russo and his crew walk in with the proper credentials to take their killing machine back, eliciting threats of going to higher authorities and exposing the workings of Russo's agency. Russo blandly tells them to go ahead and tell anybody they want to: nobody will believe them. That's refreshing.
The actors probably didn't get paid enough to supersize their meals, so it's a surprise to see some familiar faces in smaller roles. Lieutenant Mercer is played by Anthony John Denison, Detective Flynn on The Closer. Bobby Ray Shafer plays Lieutenant Clark: viewers with long memories will remember him from the wonderfully cheesy Psycho Cop and Psycho Cop Returns, and he's been on recent episodes of The Office. The other actors have had experience with small roles in larger films and parts on tv shows and there's a lot of promising talent on display here. Here's hoping they get that big break soon.