The feature film directorial debut of R.W. Goodwin, who cut his teeth on The X-Files, Alien Trespass fancies itself a Matinee-style spoof of the old sci-fi films that featured rubber alien suits and other cheesy special effects. Stripped free of any subtextual significance, however, and lacking the breezy wit or clever execution that might otherwise provide a firm reason for its own standalone existence, the film, rather than coming off as fun and lighthearted, instead just feels sludgy, pointless and wearying.

Set in 1957, Alien Trespass opens with a bizarre framing device that provides an additional, needless scrim of separation from the material. The rest of the movie chronicles a fiery object from space that crashes into a mountaintop on the outskirts of the dusty California desert town of Mojave, bringing the threat of disaster to Earth. Out of this flying saucer escapes a murderous if humorously rendered creature — the Ghota, a tentacled blob bent on destroying all life forms on the planet. Seeking to track down this creature, a benevolent alien marshal from the same spaceship, Urp, possesses the body of local astronomer Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack), which leads to several confused encounters with Ted’s wife Lana (va-voomish, period perfect Jody Thompson).

Teenage sweethearts Dick (Andrew Dunbar) and Penny (Sarah Smyth) glimpse the Ghota and, along with their friend Cody (Aaron Brooks), try to warn the authorities. However, the local police, in the form of Officer Vernon (Robert Patrick) and
Chief Dawson (Dan Lauria), are by varying degrees disinterested skeptics and
mocking hornballs; nothing good can come from their involvement in the situation. With the help, then, of Tammy (Jenni Baird, above center), a waitress from the local diner, Urp/Ted sets out to save mankind, all while dealing with the curious low-grade electrical hum of sexual attraction that the erection in his pants keeps intermittently producing.

Working from a script by Steven Fisher, and a story by Fisher and James Swift, Goodwin trades in many of the production tricks of the era (rear projection, off-screen vaporizations and other action), and also uses a spectral-synth score to nice effect. But there’s no firm point of reference for the material — it’s not played straight enough to be purely a slice of nostalgic homage, nor is it arch enough to be a rib-nudging, good-natured spoof. The film is designed and shot in relatively realistic, if spare, fashion, but the Ghota, for instance, looks entirely silly — kind of like the mouth-foaming alien creatures from The Simpsons. This gap in tonal presentation would work if Alien Trespass were more loose-limbed, or ironic. But it’s not.

Furthermore, there’s nothing driving the movie palpably forward; Chief Dawson very much doesn’t want to investigate any of this alien nonsense (to the point that you keep half-expecting some sort of twist pay-off as to why, which never arrives), and the Ted/Urp character is abandoned for entirely too long during crucial stretches of the film. Myriad small details are off, too. At one point, after barking that, “This is official police business!,” Chief Dawson lets Lana jump in the front of his police cruiser as they peel off in final pursuit of Ted; also, Penny, who’s been reticent the entire movie, suddenly gets the urge to vocalize the idea of trailing folks, and ostensibly jumping right in harm’s way. It’s OK, I suppose, to just shrug and admire the slicked-back hair and creased khakis of the period, but nothing about this putative genre send-up is smart, starched or interesting. Like its stupid Ghota, it just sits there, like a blob. (Roadside Attractions, PG, 88 minutes)