‘Alienoid: Return To The Future’ Review – A Heartening Can Of Worms

Choi Dong-hoon has done it again. His sequel to 2022’s Alienoid properly kicks off the blockbuster season, providing a similar (if not identical) wide scope of his sci-fi magic epic. He aims for a natural zenith as well as subsequently closing up the unique can of worms he has left open for almost two years between films. But as the second film is built so airtight directly on top of the first, we must glance back at it for a moment. The problems that pop out of the first Alienoid film come mostly from its post-production cutting, somewhat jostling the viewer before things eventually settle into place.

Since the second part was filmed within the same block of time as the first (within a 13-month period), the writing suffers as equally as the editing did previously. But this does not mark Alienoid unworthy of your commitment. There are so many components to Choi’s genre diptych, tipped in patchwork influences from science fiction and martial arts cinema to American Western influences and beyond that its underlying structural problems somehow don’t infect the host of this admittedly bizarre blockbuster. For better or worse, Alienoid: Return to the Future hits the ground running in exact identical fashion to its previous installment.

For those who may not remember the finer points of Choi’s first movie from two years ago, Return to the Future kicks off with a merciful recap of events to reactivate the context of events for us. But not all is covered in case its summarization gets too tedious; it gives us just enough to start the film off but some details may remain a little hazy as the shorter-but-still-long sequel climbs toward its namesake act. A full refresh may be in order for some, depending on how enthusiastically the 2022’s 143-minute runtime hits on an individual level.

Some new characters are introduced in the sequel yet have been present in some form or another previously. A predicted favorite is a soldier seen only in a single glance during the first ten minutes of the first Alienoid’s opening, at that time assumedly just an extra. He is reintroduced as Neungpa (Jin Sun-kyu), a blinded swordsman with a magical attachment to his blade. He along with the big bad Controller are searching for the Divine Blade but instead of world domination, Neungpa seeks only to restore his sight taken from him by The Controller who had been sent back in time at the end of the first film.

For most viewers, the Alienoid films are a success not only on the swings it attempts but how many of those swings result in scores but not necessarily all home runs. The duo that forms the Sorcerers of Twin Peaks continues to be a delight from the first film, and their swings result in the highest average of the rest of the cast other than the incredibly magnetic and suave Guard & Thunder (Kim Woo-bin). The sorcerer’s antics in present-day Seoul deliver impeccable fish-out-of-water comedy yet with a determination of their knowledge of good and evil, crystallized by their transporting to a gym in a high-rise building and seeing the news showing footage of The Controller on treadmills.

The two determine this to be an invasion through mystical mirrors and jumping on a treadmill apiece they proceed to destroy the screens with wild abandon in their most hilarious moment of the film, before gym security shows up to placate and escort them both out. The true spotlight of Choi’s continuation belongs to Lee Ahn (Kim Tae-ri), a girl displaced from our present in 14th century Joseon rule gifted the moniker The Girl Who Shoots Thunder, according to the sidearm she was sent back with by our robot alien heroes Guard & Thunder, which she so judiciously uses.

The path Return to the Future takes is one sadly near-identical to that of the first Alienoid. Yet in this, it feels as if the script took most of the hits from the first film’s contortions on the cutting room floor. It’s almost like Newton’s third law intervenes: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The way Alienoid absorbs its influences it feels like a lesson more pointed towards Choi than his audience, but hardly in a chastising manner.

For this reviewer, very few films are or can be perfect, and some flaws are hard to place or source which can make it more troublesome to champion in ways. But Choi’s films are simply imperfect in their application of technical craft in post- and pre-production respectively. Which is something that proves much stronger than any blank-check big-budget spectacle in the western cinematic world could ever certify. The Alienoid films as they stand now represent the best of what the most eclectic South Korean genre films can offer. Its bar is set on story and experience, never mind the business-focused decisions behind the scenes — it’s inescapable but here it isn’t applicable to critiques of craft.

The most endearing part of Alienoid: Return to the Future is Choi’s clear love of the materials he draws upon for inspiration. He takes painstaking care to create something truly original. In looking back on nearly every event in both films he triumphs in this respect. It’s hard to imagine a reality where a story such as this doesn’t resemble a messy approach in any version but it can be imagined in a much more contrived or derivative fashion. As the film runs its course it is hard to say it doesn’t affect you in some way, with emotional beats unexpected but poignant still. Some may judge Return to the Future as something to recommend only in obligation to the first to complete the story. Still, it needs to be stressed that the Alienoid films are in this way recommended as the unique captured bits of thunder they are.

Alienoid: Return to the Future will be available exclusively in theaters on January 26, 2024, courtesy of Well Go USA.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCXoIceNTJQ]