‘Kids vs. Aliens’ vs. Adulthood: An Extraterrestrial Battle Cry For Embracing Your Inner Child
Matt Konopka
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When someone says, “you’re too old for that,” I want to strap them on a rocket into the sun. You’re never too old for the things you love!
Yet as a monster kid growing up in the 90s before horror was “cool”—it always was, though—those words were as much an incessant theme in my life as that damn Silver Shamrock jingle. You’re too old for horror movies. You’re too old to dress up for Halloween. Oh, and you’re too old to be playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors for the thousandth time. Grow up. Go on dates. Get a job. Be an adult.
From the moment you hit 13 (or earlier), people start trying to kill the kid in you. Like they want to destroy whatever makes you unique so you can be just like them. This is why Jason Eisener’s Masters of the Universe meets The McPherson Tape banger, Kids vs. Aliens, is so valuable for kids. Because it’s more than an entertaining aliens attack movie. The film is a battle cry of the inner child, one that screams adulthood will have to pry childish things from their cold, dead hands before they’ll give them over.
Inspired by a 1967 event in which a UFO supposedly crashed into a lake in the Nova Scotian town of Shag Harbour (and adapted from Eisener’s V/H/S/2 segment “Slumber Party Alien Abduction”), Kids vs. Aliens follows a group of hellions led by Sam (Phoebe Rex) and her little brother, Gary (Dominic Mariche). The production of their bonkers dinosaurs in space movie is interrupted when Sam falls for teen bully, Billy (Calem MacDonald). Struggling between holding onto childhood or giving it all up for a chance to be “cool”, Sam has to make a decision when aliens emerge from the lake and crash her Halloween house party.
Childhood is when we begin to discover who we are in this big, wide universe. It’s like being an astrologist finding new stars. Every discovery is exciting. The passions of the tykes in Kids vs. Aliens are their entire life. They’re into dinosaurs, wrestling, and fantasy movies, so they cram all of that into their film, just as Eisener is squeezing all of his passions into his film. “My childhood guides everything I do,” he told our friends at Fangoria in Vol. 2, #18. Eisener gets it. He knows how important it is to have that childish glee that runs rampant throughout the movie. The director makes us feel like that excited kid again through frenetic editing and a fast pace that leaves you spinning. Explosions of neon call back to childhood pixie stick sugar highs. Andrew Gordon Macpherson’s score imbues the audience with unstoppable kid energy.
A stark contrast to the film’s teenagers.
Billy and pals are the polar opposites of our young stars. Dressed in dark clothing, they stick out like a severed thumb in a film otherwise soaked in color. Eisener makes sure we feel attacked here because this was many of us as teens (minus the bullying, I hope). Bland, angry, think-everything-is-boring youths, a perfect picture of irony because in reality, they’re the ones that are dull. I’ve stood at that line we cross from childhood into the confusing void between kid and adult when we forget how to just have fun. It stinks!
Eisener emphasizes this with a calm pace during their scenes. Less camera movement. Less excitement. A lackluster group so wearisome that Trish (Emma Vickers) bemoans the possibility of having “another boring Halloween”. Aside from the fact that calling Halloween “boring” is a massive red flag—I don’t make the rules—I almost feel bad for them because they’ve given up kid stuff like dressing up in costumes. The teens might as well be husks taken over by invaders from Mars.
Wild and over-the-top as it is, Kids vs. Aliens recalls that suck-tastic period we all go through, Us vs. Peer Pressure. I’d been bullied for so long, that once the kids around me stopped being into “kid stuff”, I saw an opportunity to fit in. Shirts featuring favorites like the Wolf Man got replaced by plain clothes. Horror movie sleepovers became smoking outside the local Denny’s. God forbid anyone came over and caught me playing with action figures. I don’t know what I was thinking. Giving it all up—in public, anyway—didn’t make me “cool”. It did make me feel empty. Just like the teens in Eisener’s film.
Poor Sam encounters her own pressure point in bubble-butt Billy. Into the cocoon of her crush she goes as a passionate geek, out she comes as a personality-less moth. Her bright clothing gets tossed aside for whatever’s popular at Abercrombie that week. She quits Gary’s movie. Sam stops having fun. I want to kick Billy in the nards when he remarks “I used to be into wrestling when I was a kid,” upon learning of Sam’s obsession with female wrestler, Valora. A not-so-subtle dig at her implying she’s “childish”. Nothing wrong with digging wrestling as an adult, people! I could fill a novel with the number of times I’ve heard something similar in regard to horror.
Up yours with a twirling lawnmower, Billys of the world.
Hanging onto childhood passions as more and more people tell you to “grow out of it” becomes a daily battle. Gary’s dead on when he says “this means war” in response to Billy’s attack on their passions. In Kids vs. Aliens, the losers of said war are the teenagers who have let their childish spirits go.
While Eisener was just going with the classic “Grey Men” appearance for his space invaders—which all look out of this world, by the way—between their colorless skin and the empty, white light they arrive in, it’s easy to interpret them as metaphors for adulthood. The light draws the kids in like moths to their bland existence. Even the alien lair is dull, whereas you’d normally find spaceships lit up like Christmas trees in sci-fi films. They’ve come to either steal the flesh of youth to power their ship—good riddance, Trish—or complete the crossover from teen to adult by turning the kids into one of them (as they do with Dallas/Isaiah Fortune).
Only the kids avoid becoming space dust. After all, silencing your inner child equals a death of sorts. A metaphorical slaying that removes who you are and leaves you as boring as the Grey Men, with nothing separating you from the pack. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I stopped trying to be “cool” and started to be me again, outside and in. My so-called “childish” passions saved my life in more ways than one, just as they do for Sam and the other kids. She lays a smackdown on the aliens with a sword and inspiration from her hero. Jack’s effects he created for their movie gives the creatures a big bang to remember. Letting yourself be a kid is how you survive in Kids vs. Aliens. It’s what keeps us all feeling truly alive.
Teenagers. Adults. Aliens from outer space. We face influences throughout our lives that try to change us. The worst thing we can ever do is abide. I don’t know where I’d be without my horror movies, toys, or trips to fan conventions. We can never have enough movies like this, or The Monster Squad, or Paranorman, those films that remind us it’s okay to be into “childish” things, to be different. Jason Eisener’s message transmitted across screens is one we can’t afford to ignore lest we become dull, grey creatures ourselves. Fuck space. Fuck adulthood. And fuck anyone that tells you to “grow up”.
Categorized:Editorials
