Remember to Forget The Recall
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if The X-Files had a low-budget cousin who got kicked out of film school, The Recall has your answer. Directed by Mauro Borrelli, this 2017 sci-fi “horror” film stars Wesley Snipes as a space cowboy with trust issues, R.J. Mitte as a vacationing teen who looks permanently confused, and a handful of aliens that appear to have escaped from a PlayStation 2 cutscene.
It’s the kind of movie that promises cosmic terror and delivers a group therapy session filmed in the woods. It’s called The Recall—perhaps because after watching it, you’ll wish there had been one.
The Plot (Such As It Is)
The setup is simple: a group of generic teenagers head to a remote cabin in the woods for a vacation, which, in horror-movie terms, is shorthand for “we’re about to die stupidly.” Along the way, they meet a mysterious stranger known only as “The Hunter” (Wesley Snipes), who wears camouflage, scowls at everything, and looks like he’s wondering how this script ended up in his hands.
When they finally arrive at the cabin, they do what all cinematic teenagers do—wander around, drink, and ignore warning signs. Soon enough, strange lights appear in the sky, aliens start popping out of the shadows, and everyone begins making decisions that make you root for the extraterrestrials.
Then the movie takes a wild turn into conspiracy territory: Snipes’ character reveals he’s an ex-astronaut who was abducted by aliens, experimented on, and now has psychic powers. Because apparently NASA’s training program involves telekinesis and trauma.
By the time the aliens start abducting everyone, the story has already collapsed under its own ambition. It’s part Signs, part Predator, part “we ran out of money halfway through filming.”
Wesley Snipes: Galactic Tax Fugitive
Let’s talk about Wesley Snipes, the main draw and the only reason anyone might accidentally press “play.” As The Hunter, he plays a man who survived alien abductions, learned telekinesis, and apparently shops exclusively at Army Surplus Warehouse. Snipes spends most of the movie glaring intensely, delivering monologues about alien DNA, and occasionally doing kung fu on rubber-suited invaders.
It’s as if Blade retired, moved to a cabin, and started hunting E.T. for sport. And honestly, that’s not a bad premise—if only the film had leaned into it. But instead of giving Snipes room to chew scenery, The Recall confines him to babysitting a group of teens so bland they make him look like a Shakespearean actor.
There’s a scene where he kills an alien using a homemade trap, smirks, and lights a cigarette while staring into the middle distance. For a brief, shining moment, you can see the Wesley Snipes of old. Then the camera cuts back to the teenagers arguing about who saw what, and the magic dies faster than the movie’s CGI budget.
The Teens: Victims of Dialogue, Not Aliens
Our group of vacationers consists of five indistinguishable pretty people whose personalities can best be described as “wet cardboard.” There’s Brendan (R.J. Mitte, trying his best to shake off his Breaking Bad past), Charlie (Jedidiah Goodacre, whose last name is ironically more interesting than his performance), Rob (the obligatory gun-loving hothead), Annie (the supportive blonde), and Kara (the mysterious one).
They all spend the first half of the movie bickering, flirting, and ignoring glowing sky phenomena that any sane person would describe as “time to leave.” Their dialogue sounds like it was written by an alien trying to mimic human speech. At one point, someone actually says, “Dude, what if it’s like, the government?” and everyone just nods, solemnly.
When the aliens finally show up, it’s almost a relief. Unfortunately, even the abductions are boring. The UFOs look like screen savers, and the beam effects resemble a flashlight shining through a fog machine. It’s hard to feel fear when you’re busy checking your phone battery.
Aliens, CGI, and Other Unnatural Phenomena
The aliens themselves are a masterpiece of mediocrity. They’re tall, grey, and about as menacing as a damp mannequin. The film tries to hide their flaws in darkness, but when they do appear, it’s clear that someone spent their entire effects budget at a Halloween store.
Their spaceship interiors are even worse—like a laser tag arena designed by IKEA. The supposed “experiments” consist of the actors lying on tables while the aliens wave glowsticks over them. It’s less Alien: Covenant and more Close Encounters of the Boring Kind.
To make matters worse, the movie occasionally cuts to stock footage of lightning storms and atmospheric “disturbances,” as if to say, “Look, global stakes!” The effect is less apocalyptic and more like a weather forecast gone rogue.
A Conspiracy of Confusion
After everyone gets abducted, the film reboots itself like a malfunctioning Windows update. The characters wake up back at the cabin, their memories wiped, and everything seemingly normal—except now they have alien “enhancements.”
What kind of enhancements, you ask? Well, they can move objects with their minds, heal people, and apparently murder government soldiers without consequence. Because nothing says “summer vacation” like telekinetic war crimes.
There’s a late-game twist involving a military quarantine and a shootout that feels like it wandered in from another script. By the end, you’re not sure if you’ve watched an alien invasion, a government cover-up, or a really bad anti-smoking PSA. The movie’s final image—a storm brewing, signaling the aliens’ return—feels like a threat.
The Script: A Cosmic Joke
The writing by Reggie Keyohara and Sam Acton King deserves its own abduction. The dialogue is full of exposition dumps, pseudo-science, and monologues that sound like rejected Ancient Aliens episodes. Every time Snipes starts explaining evolution or cosmic manipulation, you can almost hear the screenwriter googling furiously.
At one point, The Hunter says, “They’ve been controlling human evolution for millennia.” Another character responds, “Dude, that’s messed up.” It’s Shakespeare in space, folks.
The pacing doesn’t help—half the film is setup, the other half is incoherent chaos. By the time you reach the ending, you’re left wondering if you’ve just experienced enlightenment or a migraine.
The Recall’s Biggest Mystery: Why Does It Exist?
The Recall wants to be a lot of things: a horror movie, a sci-fi thriller, a conspiracy mystery, and a philosophical treatise on humanity’s place in the cosmos. What it ends up being is 90 minutes of misplaced ambition and unintentional comedy.
It’s too serious to be camp, too dumb to be deep, and too cheap to be convincing. Yet, in its own way, it’s hypnotic—like watching someone try to juggle and set themselves on fire at the same time.
Final Thoughts: Beam Me Out of Here
There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like alien experiments on your brain. The Recall is the latter. It’s not scary, it’s not thrilling, and it’s barely coherent. It’s what happens when someone tries to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind on a Sharknado budget.
Still, there’s a strange charm in watching Wesley Snipes scowl his way through this cosmic catastrophe. He’s the only one who seems aware that the film is a lost cause, and he treats it like performance art.
In the end, The Recall does teach us one important lesson: sometimes the real horror isn’t alien invasion—it’s human filmmaking. So if you’re ever abducted by aliens and they offer to screen this movie for you, just tell them you surrender. It’s the merciful choice.
