Verdict
Summary
The movie is at its best when it allows star Campbell to be the center of attention, and fortunately he’s featured through the entire movie as the antihero who occasionally gets a quip or joke in. It’s exactly the sort of role he was best at (and still is, but these days he relies too much on spoofing his image), and so the movie remains watchable, if a little too weak in the knees to sustain multiple viewings.
Plot:
Aliens converge at a snowed-in airport terminal where a handful of desperate would-be travellers – including a handcuffed murder suspect – scramble to survive.
Review:
A private airport lies in the middle of nowhere in the heart of a wintry snowstorm. The airport’s owner and sole pilot is a tough cookie named Cathy (Chase Masterson), and she’s got a handful of pushy, expectant paying passengers lined up just itching to get their schedules going, but the storm has them all pinned in place. When two cops pull up with a handcuffed prisoner named Jack (Bruce Campbell still very much in his prime), everything is about to get real complicated. When Jack is taking a leak in the bathroom with the two cops hanging close by, an alien enemy shows up and makes a mess of the cops, but Jack survives and neutralizes the creature, which seems to be made of a liquid substance and disappears after being killed. When Jack emerges from the bathroom and into the terminal, everyone thinks he killed the cops, but it’s obviously more complicated than that. Jack takes control of everyone – including a couple of kids no one seems to know or take ownership of – and that’s when things go south. Aliens are among them and intend on enslaving the human race (starting with this group!), but not if Jack has anything to say or do about it. The first order of business is to figure out who’s human and who’s not of this earth, and then the group that’s human has to survive the night and make it through the storm … or the invasion will turn them all into mindless slaves!
Made for the SyFy Channel at the height of the channel’s era when it was producing tons of original movies, many of which involved creatures, aliens, or monsters, Terminal Invasion is set entirely in one location and sporadically features some alien action, but for the most part it’s basically got characters pointing guns at each other, panicked and uncertain about who’s friend or foe. The movie is at its best when it allows star Campbell to be the center of attention, and fortunately he’s featured through the entire movie as the antihero who occasionally gets a quip or joke in. It’s exactly the sort of role he was best at (and still is, but these days he relies too much on spoofing his image), and so the movie remains watchable, if a little too weak in the knees to sustain multiple viewings. It took about 15 minutes of watching it to realize I’d seen it years ago, which should say something about its sustaining power. Horror specialist Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th, Deepstar Six) directed this. The score is by Harry Manfredini.
Kino Lorber is releasing Terminal Invasion on Blu-ray later this month, and if you don’t already own the DVD from Universal, this might be a good chance to pick it up. The transfer is slick, and there’s an audio commentary by the director and the producer, as well as a short feature on the alien creature. There’s also a slipcover.
