5000 Space Aliens was directed by Scott Bateman. The introductory text states we are looking at footage of 5,000 Space Aliens. It is left to the audience to determine whether or not that statement ought to be taken literally.

I know a lot of people who think of A24 when they think of arthouse films. I’m not going to argue how accurate or inaccurate that thought is. I’m just going to say if I’m talking about arthouse, I’m talking about something a little more niche and less tied to traditional narrative structures, where the logic of a tale is often found in how a narrative is expressed as opposed to the narrative itself. With that in mind, I would consider 5000 Space Aliens to be a true arthouse film. There was no story structure, no character development, and no spoken dialogue. To combat the biases I have that are in favor of the traditional story structure, I have to think of this less as a movie and more as a project.

5000 Space Aliens depicted creative imagery centered around numerous individuals set to music. One thing evident from the start is it demanded my attention. I could not stop to do something else. If I decided to check the text messages on my phone, I would probably miss at least two segments. The editing was very impressive. I’ve used a bit of Sony Vegas, and if I had to effectively synch music to various imagery in the same way I would find it to be a rather tedious endeavor. Some of the imagery was stylistically similar to others, but they were edited in a way that gives these moments enough space that they don’t come off as redundant. Our audience may be wondering if 5000 Space Aliens is horror-related. It did occasionally have horror and horror-adjacent text and imagery, but tonally it was not aiming for horror. If I am to describe the tone, the word that comes to mind is “groovy.” This is due to the music that drove the experience, which I found highly enjoyable. It did hit other moods. There were moments of suspense, warmth, and comedy. The suspense was born from the music. It was not dissimilar to listening to a song and waiting for a beat to drop.

Once I became acclimated to what 5000 Space Aliens was, it was clear the thing that was going to make or break it was how much of it I could endure while maintaining interest. There came a point where I was missing the majority of the text, and I knew I was reaching my limit. By the time it ended, I was more than ready for it to end. That said, I was good for the vast majority of the experience.

This is an oversimplification, but it may benefit readers to consider 5000 Space Aliens a feature-length music video, visual album, or graphics mixtape. If that sounds appealing to you, this is worth watching. If I were approaching this the way I would approach the average movie, I would give it a 7 out of 10 based on the experience. However, I’m reviewing this as a project. As a project, it deserves more, as entertainment alone does not accurately reflect the effort and artistic achievement present.