Alien Raiders, Homicidal Alien Aisle 4

What if "The Thing" had taken place in a supermarket instead of a remote Antarctic outpost? What if the hero of that classic horror tale was a stockboy instead of MacReady the helicopter pilot? Before you answer those questions, consider 2008's "Alien Raiders." "The Mist" and "Intruder" may have to give way to "Alien Raiders," which may be the best horror film ever shot in a supermarket. Heavily influenced by "The Thing," let us look at "Alien Raiders."

A highly trained, and armed tactical team converges on Hastings Market in Buck Lake, Arizona for an apparent robbery. This team appears psycho as they seemingly gun down innocent, defenseless customers in the aisles.  Uh oh...this ain't a robbery, and those innocents were anything but. Ritter (Carlos Bernard) heads the team, and just happens to be a cast-off from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This team? Alien hunters. Ritter and his band find aliens, who are hiding in human bodies, and kill them.  The team has a spotter, who has the ability to sense the fiends inside their human hosts.  Uh oh...a cop in the market kills the spotter during the take-over.

Now Ritter's team is barricaded inside the market with some horrified employees, perhaps some bloodthirsty aliens, and the Buck Lake Police waiting outside...also heavily armed.  Detective Seth (Mathew St. Patrick) plays the hostage negotiator, and he soon finds out that Ritter and his peeps may not be robbers.  The team knows the alien king is hidden in someone's body...but who's? Without the spotter, Sterling (Courtney Ford) must perform a very painful and bloody test, manually, on all the market's occupants.  As our alien king goes on the offensive, picking off real humans, and the SWAT team gets ready to make an entry, Ritter must act fast and come up with a better plan to identify and kill our creature from outer space.

Jeffrey Licon and Samantha Streets are super as scared teen-aged market employees trying to survive the invaders and the monster,  Whatever plans our tormentors from deep space have, Ritter is determined to end them at Hastings Market. Are the aliens that explode out of people in this film a mere metaphor for hormone injected cattle which permeate our meat departments in today's supermarkets?  Yeah...probably not. You would have to ask director Ben Rock that question, as he is the brilliant director of this fast-paced scifi/horror gem.