"The Arrival", not to be confused with David Twohy's mid-90's Sci-Fi gem starring Charlie Sheen, is a modest and slightly underrated (only *slightly *, mind you) alien-invasion story with a couple of imaginative ideas and likable acting performances, but overall forgettable due to a lack of action and distinctive style. The plot is better than you expect it to be, but director David Schmoeller ("Tourist Trap", "The Puppet Master") obviously didn't have the required budgetary means to properly execute the neat ideas. The film opens with a meteor crash-landing in Max Page's backyard on the night of his 73rd birthday-celebration. The next day, an extraterrestrial parasite takes possession of Max' body and nearly causes him to die in the hospital. He survives and, moreover even, Max rejuvenates and develops an incontrollable appetite for Oestrogen-laden female blood. Cut to several weeks later, when the younger and handsome version of Max left his home to travel to San Diego in search for the beautiful young nurse who treated him in the hospital. He leaves an easy to follow trial of female corpses, but still FBI agent Mills (John Saxon!) doesn't know how to stop him. "The Arrival" is a slow-moving and unspectacular film, especially since there aren't any kind of special and/or make-up effects. Max rejuvenates in three major phases and he devours practically all of his victims off-screen. The wannabe melodramatic sub plot (the impossible romance between the nurse and alienated old guy) is pitiable instead of moving and the script also suffers from illogicalness and totally implausible details. For example, the FBI acknowledges the involvement of an alien life form, yet there are simply two men chasing Max. Sure, one of them is John Saxon and he's the equivalent of an entirely army, but still... Shouldn't the FBI give a little more priority to such a case? Speaking of Saxon, he gives away another solid performance and receives adequate feedback from a largely unknown cast. The undeniable highlights of "The Arrival" are a couple of irrelevant (and perhaps even misplaced) humorous cameo appearances of respectable B-movie faces. Michael J. Pollard briefly stars as a simple-minded caretaker, Stuart Gordon (director of "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond") plays a biker and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (Stuart Gordon's wife) steals the show as drunken customer in a liquor store.
