Ever reliable James Spader plays a professor named Julian Rome, dubbed an "alien hunter" because he used to work for S.E.T.I. He gets called in when a mysterious alien "black box" is discovered in the Antarctic. Some of his colleagues are eager to open this thing, and naturally when this thing - which could also be called a Pandora's box - is touched, it sets off unforeseen circumstances. Circumstances which could be dire for the whole planet. Meanwhile, a bunch of political bigwigs in Washington are meeting to discuss the implications of the matter, and the possible end result.

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, this reviewer will say that what hurts "Alien Hunter" the most is its derivative nature. It plays like an amalgam of ideas borrowed from "Alien", John Carpenters' "The Thing", "Warning Sign", and even "The Abyss". It also succumbs to an unfortunate common cliché in having a Complainer character in the form of a scientist played by Irish actor John Lynch. This guy does so much bellyaching that one prays for him to be dealt with expeditiously. You know if the character doesn't become a menace himself, he'll at least be a major nuisance. The screenplay by J.S. Cardone (based on a story he concocted with Boaz Davidson) is uninspired (and, for a while, threatens to choke on its "science fact" style exposition), but director Ron Krauss (who also appears on screen) and his crew are competent enough to make this a passable viewing. The production design and cinematography are well done and atmospheric, and the music by Tim Jones is quite nice.

Other than Spader, the rest of the acting is basically decent. Co-stars include Janine Eser, Leslie Stefanson ("The General's Daughter"), Aimee Graham ("Jackie Brown"), Stuart Charno ("Friday the 13th Part 2"), Anthony Crivello ("Spellbinder"), Roy Dotrice ('Beauty and the Beast', "Mozart"), Joel Polis ("The Thing" '82), Keir Dullea ("Black Christmas" '74, "2001: A Space Odyssey"), and Bert Emmett ("The Forsaken" '01). It is nice to see a bunch of these familiar faces here.

Worth it for fans of "The Thing" to see the Norwegian video footage from that film, used here in a somewhat different context. What also makes this a little above average is that ending; while somewhat predictable, it is an interesting touch. (One has to dig those trippy visuals.)

Six out of 10.

'Alien Hunter' is your typical evil aliens with a twist kind of a movie, in which a research team located in Antarctica find an artifact transmitting a radio code from ice. So they call in a cryptologist Julian Rome (James Spader) to crack the code.

AH isn't the sharpest nor the dullest knife in the drawer. It's main problem is, that it's basically too short for what it is and it fails to build up a tension in the key places. It's too short, because it too evident, that the characters stay very flat, though the movie tries to build up human relations between them. And because the characters stay meaningless, you care very little if they die or stay alive.

The encounters between the humans and aliens are few and in between. The main issue soon becomes from a disease the alien is carrying, as it can't be let out to the world: it would kill everything.

For what is it, 'Alien Hunter' is a decent film, with a decent cast, but that's all it really is.

I liked it. Especially the ending, though it was clearly a made for tv movie. The atmosphere was nice ... but so many things were taken from other recent movies. The most obvious is the spaceship taken from The Abyss, but there it was water, here it's forcefields or some other s**t so it doesn't count. Anyway that computer graphics is really cheap to make, looks good and it's suitably "alien" so I'll let that pass .. :)

That russian officer who fixes his hat with that phony move like Travolta with his cigarette is so funny :) I mean you have just launched a nuclear missile and you absoluteley have to fix your hat with a funny and elaborated move ... ha ha ha .. I think the guy did it to make fun at the movie.

I give it a 6/10. For James Spader and the ending. One point id for the music in the spaceship scene ...