Cast
* Bijou Phillips - Lenore
* Raphael Coleman - Frank
* James Murray
* Skye Bennett - Nicole
* Ty Glaser - Marnie
* Arkie Reece - Perry
* Laura Giosh - Officer Marcos
I wanted to start this review out by saying that I have never seen the original It's Alive. Now with that being said, for a stand alone movie I thought the 2008 remake was a decent time waster but something I don't see myself revisiting anytime in the future.
The remake is about a young couple who is getting ready to have a baby in 3 months. Turns out the baby decides it wants to be born ASAP and forces the mother, Lenore Harker (Bijou Phillips), into labor. After a C-section, the baby brutally murders the doctors and nurses who just helped birth him...pretty hardcore baby huh? After the police search the hospital and watch surveillance tapes they don't find any clues on who committed the murders. They question Lenore as she and Daniel, the Devil Child's name, were the only persons who were at the scene of the crime.
Of course no one would suspect Daniel as he is literally a new born baby but we all know he is one little bad-ass. Lenore and her boyfriend Frank (James Murray) take Daniel home but Lenore soon finds out the baby hungers for more than just breast milk. She finds dead animals in his crib and eventually finds him gnawing on any human visitor who stops by the house.
It's Alive isn't anything new or groundbreaking, I mean what could you expect from a remake? However, it does manage to hold the audiences attention and create an eerie atmosphere. Also Bijou Phillips does a great job as Lenore. At the beginning of the movie she is just a normal college student but evolves into a mother who is just trying to protect her child...even if he is eating people alive. She really comes into the role and we get to see a range in her we haven't seen before.
Another positive aspect of the film is they don't show Daniel too much. We see him when he is born and he looks just like a regular baby. Later in the movie, whenever he is wrecking havoc, we just see the carnage and the aftermath but no Daniel. To me this is very effective because in my head I can imagine far greater horrors than anything the movie can create. This statement is very true because at the end of the movie they do show Daniel in full CGI demon baby mode and it completely killed all tension and atmosphere that the movie had been building up.
As for blood, the movie has its fair share, but gore hounds will be greatly disappointed. Since It's Alive
It's Alive suffers from numerous other faults. First is that since Bijou is so well rounded, all of the other actors seem amateurish. I also noticed a lot of them had very a strange sounding English dialect which led me to believe that a good amount of the actors were foreign.
Second, as I stated earlier, killer baby movies aren't anything new or ground breaking. It's Alive plays it pretty safe and sticks to the same old same old. It also tends to drag just a little bit in between the major action scenes and the 3rd act comes and goes ways to fast. Nothing seems to stick and after the movie was over I realized that it didn't really leave any impression on me.
It's Alive is a decent time waster and nothing more. It manages to build up a great atmosphere up until the 3rd act. It probably won't stick with you after it's over and won't make a lasting impression. However, it's a good way to spend 80 minutes if you don't have anything else to do. Check it out if your a Bijou Phillips and killer baby flick fan. focuses more on creating atmosphere we get a lot of aftermath shots and blood flying everywhere more than anything else. However there is one downright nasty kill that involves young Daniel tunneling his fist into the back of someone's head.
