While good at the job of abducting their abductor, or at least one of their kind, Duke (Henke), Otis (Williams) and the remarkably foul-mouthed Cody (Boyington-McCarthy), whose brother was the one killed by the alien's experiments, have much to learn about what constitutes a responsible action, as well as forcing Wyatt, whom they consider their de facto leader, to deal with the problem as best he can.

Wyatt has to deal not only with his past rolling up into his garage, where much of the film takes place, but also with Hope's coming to grips with the grim reality, as well as the fact that the creature can control minds if its target makes eye contact with it, something Hope finds out firsthand. The creature is also very nearly as dangerous as any Predator-type beast the boys could have encountered.

Things become complicated quickly. Not only does the creature escape into the house, but the local sheriff comes to Wyatt's door to investigate a call from a concerned neighbor, something both men have grown accustomed to dealing with on a regular basis.

It goes from bad to worse to catastrophic for the backwoods men as the escaped alien inflicts grievous bodily harm to anyone in its path, each fate worse than the last.

Through the hellish evening, Wyatt comes to realize that the aliens are a good deal smarter than his friends had first given them credit for, and that they plan to hold the human race responsible for their actions.

Abduction ain't what it used to be

Much as with The Blair Witch Project, the theme relies on a small group of people of different personalities completely at sea with the situation they find themselves in, a situation that ultimately they have only themselves to blame.

Atmospheric and claustrophobic, this film takes place mostly indoors, and while we know at the outset that things such as these do not end well, in the case of these four men and one woman, we can only watch as their world unravels. And just when we think things can't possibly get any worse, we are proven wrong. These are people trapped by circumstances and their own belief in them. They are caught in their own collective spiral, not even able to pantomime their way through life before the end overtakes them.

The characters, while not given much time for backstory, are dynamic enough in their own unique personalities to warrant a kind of self-explanatory connect-the-dots: Cody is the foul-mouthed ruffian looking for nothing more than revenge for the death of his brother; Wyatt is the man whose survival depended upon isolation; Otis seems to be the only one besides Wyatt who understands the trouble they're in; and Duke means well in his plans to capture one of the aliens, realizing only too late how disastrous such things can be.