Movie Info
Movie Name: Arrival II
Studio: Artisan Entertainment
Genre(s): B-Movie/Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): November 6, 1998
MPAA Rating: R
Oh no! A CGI alien with a screwdriver!
Zane Zaminsky is dead, and a mysterious package has been delivered to his step-brother Jack Addison (Patrick Muldoon). Jack discovers that he and a group of other people received similar packages from Zane at the point of his death. When Jack, his former professor Nelson Zarcoff (Michael Sarrazin), and a reporter named Bridget Riordan (Jane Sibbett) discover that Zane’s “delusional claims” might not be a delusion at all, they find themselves in a fight to save the Earth and stop the aliens…but the web of the aliens’ control is deep and the danger is growing.
Directed by Kevin S. Tenney, Arrival II (also called The Second Arrival) is a low-budget science-fiction horror film. Unlike The Arrival in 1996, the film was released directly-to-video and largely panned.
The Arrival wasn’t memorable, and the only reason I saw Arrival II was that it was tied to the original arrival’s DVD. If I had known how bad Arrival II was, I would have regretted flipping over the DVD (yeah, you had to flip it).
Running…so much running
The story for Arrival II doesn’t even really try. A packet of information is sent to multiple people and the obviously unimportant people immediately die (Sarrazin lasts a bit longer since he’s got more acting credits). The movie then banks a lot of its hope on a bad CGI program that has the characters enter the spaceship and using it as part of the sabotage. The movie makes little sense and even the aliens don’t speak the alien language to each other like in the previous movie in private (I guess they really want to absorb the culture). It’s lazy and dull.
The acting is awful. Patrick Muldoon plays Jack Addison as a kind of slacker Gen-Xer who feels really out of place. Jane Sibbett is potentially the worst reporter of all time and neither character makes any effort to document the situation after “they lose all their stuff”. I know it was pre-cellphones and pre-affordable recording devices, but they are breaking into ice rinks, campus, etc…just steal some equipment.
Yep, every penny of this CGI was worth it
The effects are horrible. You get an ok look at one of the aliens early on and then the simulated ship and that blew the small budget. It wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but the style of shooting is quite poor and feels like a college attempt at a TV show.
Skip Arrival II. If you happened to love The Arrival, it isn’t worth ruining your memories of the movie, and if you (like me) barely remembered The Arrival, this movie is by far less memorable (unless you remember the bad script, bad acting, and bad visuals). Arrival II ends with the war against the aliens continuing, but fortunately, we were subjected to seeing it.
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