User Reviews

The Salena Incident is set in Arizona where six death row inmates are being transfered from the state prison for reasons never explained, while driving along the heavily armed prison bus gets a flat & the driver is forced to pull off the road. Then two blonde birds turn up & after seducing the incompetent prison guards manage to get the better of them, the six prisoners are released but in a shoot-out their getaway car is damaged leaving them all stranded in the middle of the Arizona desert. They decide to head to the nearest town, Salena several miles away & take the cops with them as hostage. Once they reach Salena they find it odd that the place is completely deserted with not one single other person in sight. They soon discover that the entire town has been killed by flesh eating aliens & they are firmly placed on the menu...

Also known as Alien Invasion Arizona in the US on DVD & apparently having the working title Terror Town this rubbishy low budget sci-fi horror flick was co-written, co-produced & directed by Dustin Rikert & has no real redeeming features at all, to be frank The Salena Incident is the sort of film which gives films a bad name. The film could roughly be divided into two parts, the opening forty or fifty odd minutes focuses on the prisoners in a thriller feeling opening, the guards & the escape although it's pretty poorly written & staged stuff. The dialogue between the two blonde birds & the prison guards is so bad it's unintentionally funny as the two fit birds chat up the two not so fit prison guards. Funny stuff actually, unfortunately The Salena Incident is supposed to be a sci-fi horror film not a comedy. Then once the escaped cons & their prison guard hostages arrive at Salena it goes into sci-fi horror mode as the aliens turn up & start killing our clichéd character's off which is good because they are annoying. Look, the whole film sucks as it's badly written, thought out & made. I can't really be bothered to go into why but trust me The Salena Incident is awful on every level.

As well as being just a bad, boring & stupid film The Salena Incident is also poorly made. The action set-piece scenes are awful, the aliens looks terrible & are never shown on screen at the same time as the human character's & as such it's sometimes difficult to tell what's happening. The special effects are poor too, the aliens look rubbish & the CGI computer effects are absolutely terrible as well. The editing is poor, the cinematography is poor, the sets are cheap & the whole thing is just an eyesore really. There's a bit of gore, there's some gunshot wounds, someone is ripped in half & a severed hand is seen.

Obviously shot on a low budget The Salena Incident has low production values & looks cheap from start to finish. Filmed in Superior in Arizona. The acting is terrible from no-one I have ever heard of although the actress who plays the female doctor is pretty good looking.

The Salena Incident is a rubbish sci-fi horror film that is terrible in just about every way, not worth 90 minutes of yours, mine or anyone else's time.

The Salena Incident is by far the director, Dustin Rikert's, best film --- which isn't saying much. In his past films (and I use the term "films" loosely), the director takes ideas from Hollywood blockbusters and severely marginalizes them. The Salena Incident is no different. The movie is basically Con Air meets Aliens done with the semblance of your average film school production. The film is riddled with out-of-focus shots and plagued by special effects that would have trouble rivaling most high school computer animation classes. For example almost every on-screen explosion is the same fire effect matted over the screen.

The weak effects and production value are only compromised by a flawed plot and rocky dialogue. In a sentence, the story strings together like an exposition of overused Hollywood clichés. The movie begins with the worst CGI Alien ship ever made crashing into the worst CGI earth ever made and a team of army somethings going down to investigate. Next a bus of prison transports, carrying the worst of the worst from across the state, is overthrown by the prisoners with the help of their blonde girlfriends armed with silicon implants. The prisoners escape and run into the town of Salena where they encounter the aliens who... SHOCK... have escaped from an alien prison transport carrying the worst of the worst from across the galaxy. The prisoners, and their captive police armed with only guns and sad puns have to fight off the aliens and escape the town before the International Space Alliance *rolls eyes* bombs the city into oblivion.

The only real enjoyable parts of the movie are when the actors (who are clearly undermined by the script) are given the freedom to improvise and also when they fight off the smaller of the alien creatures in a flurry of gun fire. Other than that, the movie really isn't worth anyone's time let alone the plastic that the DVD is made out of. How awful was it? Let's just say the Secretary of Defense is about 90 years old, works in a room that is about as high tech 1950's real estate office and is wearing a Looney Tunes tie. Yes, if that wasn't clear enough before, THE MAN IN CHARGE OF THE PENTAGON IS WEARING A TIE WITH BUGS BUNNY AND THE ROAD RUNNER ON IT. The movie basically culminates (HAHAHahhaaa did I say culminates...) with the last remaining soldier running into the group of prisoners and guards and the new formed team fighting their way away from the vicious aliens --- which for some strange reason leads them straight back to the Alien ship? yeah...

The movie has heart but is riddled with horrible direction and even worse camera work. Someone seriously needed to slap the DP and tell him there is more to cinematography than repetitive, stagnant, chest-level shots. This movie really isn't worth renting (if it ever makes it that far) being that it's not as horribly bad as the last films made by the director which reduces the laugh-ability, but it's nowhere near watchable cinema.

That might sound a bit too harsh. And the movie tries and is pretty trashy (I can see why someone rated it really high) and funny at times. But overall it does not really entertain as much as it could. It tries to be too serious for its own good. Still (and especially if you consider the German title "... Invasion USA", that kinda spoilers what this incident is about ... or whom it is about), if you have nothing else to do ...

Then again there are better movies out there. Even the Devils Playground and other movies have more "value", but of course also a higher budget. Only watch if you can deal with the low budget restrictions and other flaws!

A darn tootin' good time on this movie. Lots of action, great sound track, and some very interesting visual moments. Also, some very strong acting from all of the characters.

I felt like the set decoration was highly creative, the "critters" were particularly creepy, and the photography was stunning. Also, the editing really kept the pace up, so I was genuinely interested in what was going to happen to the characters throughout the entire movie.

All this being said, I thought the little tag at the end was a little bit of a stretch, but it still made sense with the entire film that came before it.

If you're interested in a sci-fi film with action and tension, this one's for you. Check it out!

"The Salena Incident" surprised me. I found it to be very entertaining and more witty than expected. It had everything from scare moments to some bits of comedy, fight sequences, and some nice dramatic touches.

The filmmakers don't take themselves too seriously, it's a sci-fi film after all, and the larger than life characters were very believable. There's quite a bit of action which keeps the pace up, and the director did a good job not showing the creatures too much which added more suspense.

The overall story was very strong, but my favorite was the music and the sound effects.