Director: Jeffrey Travis
Invasion Day (Dragon Day) – Movie Review
We cannot imagine life without our gadgets anymore. Cell phones, laptops, electronic operating systems in our cars are something that are considered as standard nowadays, but what will we do when we can no longer use them? Will they render us powerless and will we have to submit to those who are able to use even more advanced technology, to provide us with what we need on a daily basis? Invasion Day portrays such a scenario.
The movie starts off with Duke Evans, an NSA engineer, who gets fired because they claim he has no value for the NSA anymore. Trying to keep his head above water, Duke decides to move in the house the has inherited from his recently deceased grandfather. Together with his wife and daughter, he wants to start all over again.
When arriving at the fairly remote cottage his grandfather lived in, they notice the place is not uninhabited. Considering the safety of his family, Duke decided to go outside and send his daughter and his sister out for a fun activity, so they would not notice the events to come, when Duke inform the police. Whilst at first Duke informed the police of this so called trespasser, the misunderstanding was soon cleared up. Alonso, who had been living in the house, was actually the man who was left in charge to take care of the house until Duke would come and claim his inheritance.
During the so called mix-up a plane flies by really low, and crashes a bit further. Which gives the sheriff and his deputy more pressing matters to deal with than Duke’s problem with the caretaker. At the same time, it seems even more explosions can be seen from the distance and other electronic devices seem to become useless as well. After an announcement from the president on television, everything such as cell phones, new cars and so on stop working. It seems America is suffering from a giant terrorist attack, that must have taken a whole lot of planning. The culprit behind this, is not to be searched for widely, seeing it’s the Chinese government’s way of ‘claiming what is theirs’. The United States have a trillion dollars loan, which they refuse to pay back to the Chinese, and thus a giant conflict was bound to happen.
Soon after, resources become scarce, water is nowhere to be found and everyone adopts a mentality of everyone for themselves. Inhabitants are given the choice of wearing a bracelet, that identifies them as a new inhabitant of the new republic, but these bracelets smell quite fishy. This is where the movie shows us choices have to be made in order to survive and that living without technology might not be ‘natural’ for us anymore.
Overall Invasion Day is a movie that handles a fairly slow pace. The movie shows us more about how a family struggles to survive, instead of the actual looting, killing and other hectic events concerning the situation. Duke, will try to find a solution by contacting his friend that still works with the NSA as well as provide safety for his family. The end will provide a few action scenes, but overall it’s more a thriller/drama instead of the action genre the movie places itself in.
During the course of the movie, you’ll see appearances from fairly unknown actors. Whilst the movie does not rely on that many important roles, outside of the Evans family, there are a few characters that could have come across a bit more convincingly. Duke (Ethan Flower) has to carry most of the movie on his shoulders, but sadly he does not always succeed, be it by his own acting performance, or the script that provides for some useless scenes throughout the movie.
These mentioned scenes offer a series of annoyances throughout the movie. For instance, the sheriff threatens Duke to fix his water pump by the morning of the next day, or otherwise it will cost him his life. Sadly, for some reason the sheriff must have decided that he could go another day without water and thus decides to show up fashionable late, to hear if Duke has fixed the pump. Other inconsistencies happen with the curfew that is placed during the movie, which seems active at one point but is totally disrespected at other times. Also scenes, where characters could have been saved by moving them back inside, it seems letting them die slowly was a better choice. (Vague description, but otherwise a lot would have been spoiled.)
Whilst the invasion is happening on a very large scale, the use of special effects is fairly limited, which is not a bad thing per se. The movie does not require that much action in order to remain true to the story it’s telling us. Whilst some items may look fairly fake, some imagination can do the trick.
Conclusion
Invasion Day offers us a glimpse of things how our technological progress can be used against us. Whilst not all elements of the movie prove to be amusing the watch, because of poor script writing or bad acting, the movie still proves to be a decent watch, if you’re in to doomsday stories.
Invasion Day (Dragon Day) - Movie Review,
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