Acorn Media, out now

Siblings Mimi and Luke unwittingly resurrect an ancient alien overlord. Using a magical amulet, they force the monster to obey their childish whims, and accidentally attract a rogue’s gallery of intergalactic assassins to small-town suburbia.

Sometimes you just don’t ‘get’ a film. Writer/director Steven Kostanski’s (The Void) love letter to Power Rangers and Masters of the Universe by way of Troma and Charles Band is like an explosion in an 80s video shop, failed to engage with me on any level. As a comedy, it’s not funny, as a horror movie the effects are too rubbery, and as kids’ movie it’s too visceral. I can’t even accept that it’s post-modern or meta.

The juvenile leads are not engaging – Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna, Books of Blood) is a brat, while brother Luke (Owen Myre) is wet behind the ears – and their parents are constantly bickering. It’s just all too childish and silly, and as for the music breaks – give me a break! Rubber suits, gallons of blood, lousy acting, poorly staged fights – this really is bargain basement nonsense.

When films were this bad in the 80s, it was because they had no money or creative talents – this isn’t something to reminisce as a good thing, through rose-tinted nostalgia-fuelled glasses. It’s for those who thought that Frank Langella’s Skeletor wasn’t camp enough or that Rawhead Rex needed a few more teeth and needed to look more plasticky. Bless ’em, there’s even a little message at the end for the kids.

The extensive extras (over two hours) add an extra point to the overall score. There’s a director’s​commentary, interviews with cast and crew, fight choreography, the music of the movie, behind the scenes featurette, concept art gallery, trading cards gallery and concept art gallery.

Verdict: Maybe this will find its home at a midnight screening in an auditorium of intoxicated festival goers, but in the cold light of a day it’s one helluva mess. 3/10

Nick Joy