Review of The Return of James Battle

I discovered this picture at a surprise showing on 2004's Sitges Film Festival, and it was a very appealing surprise. As I was completely blank about what was I going to see, it all started strange (an astronaut? But then, no, this is not an astronaut story...), then the story started to develop in very familiar tones (to me, a Spanish viewer, it echoed a mix of Alex de la Iglesia, Santiago Segura and Karra Elejalde) with the sci-fi and horror touch slowly advancing as a secondary storyline. That was one of the best ideas for the movie: not making the fantastic part the main one, but showing how a very used cinema topic (the alien invasion) affected the everyday life of a lost in the swamp "village" (although it could have been any of your back country small villages, any Western country you live in). The end was strange (there is were I got the idea of Atomik Circus being perhaps an European comic book, because both the name and the ending is very typical of European short sci-fi comic books), but the Lovecraftian reference was bot inspired and unexpected, and I loved it. All in all, an 8 (some of the acting was a bit so-so), and an enjoyable movie.