Every once in a while, a really special film comes along. So special it affects you at a visceral level. As a huge fan of llamas, I decided to watch a film with extreme hope in my heart based on the recommendation of a sage friend, and thus made no attempts to research said film beforehand, knowing their advice has never steered me wrong in the past. With the 2015 comedy sci-fi “Llamageddon” directed by Howie Dewin (but most interestingly with no writing credits almost as if no pre-planning had taken place) this film could certainly be described as special. In this case, however, the word “special” must be uttered with a similar tone one would apply to the bug-eyed kid that pulls the wings of flies and picks his nose in class.

It all started well enough with a snappy cartoon showing an army of evil looking llamas marching across a strange landscape with clear malicious intent, with new llamas being hatched out of eggs to increase the already alarming numbers. It was one such llama that we follow the journey of, as they climb into their extremely high-tech spaceship, resembling some kind of tiny minivan, shoot off into space into our very own solar system, taking out an unsuspecting spacewalker fixing a satellite with laser beams (!?!?) only to crash land on planet earth after sustaining damage as part of their own attack. As setting the scene goes, very swift! However, as a flush of a toilet sends things swirling down into the bowels of the sewers below, so the rest of this film begins.

The mistake was stepping away from what was actually an acceptable standard of cartoonery, and branching into the world of real live action, requiring writing skills, acting skills, director skills, special effects skills and of course some semblance of a budget. I have a feeling later cartoon scenes were also used simply because the ability to portray these scenes using any of the aforementioned skills was beyond the filmmakers. Mercifully, this film was only 1hr 9 minutes long, of which I estimate the star of the show, Louie the Llama, who brought such depth to his multi-faceted alien llama character, appeared for probably only 15 of those minutes. But with his outstanding costume design of sinister glowing red eyes he could easily be compared to Hannibal Lector that stole the show in Silence of the Lambs with such presence you could not believe the short screen time. Another mistake one might feel in not having Louie in all scenes…or only Louie in all scenes…

The other minutes (that felt like hours) not involving Louie subjected us to a veritable feast of poor acting skills ranging from dreadful, to appalling, to really dreadful, to plain dire. The writing, if there was any, was also cliched drivel at best and painful at worst. Take this epic speech to some rousing music, for example, after some of our fleeing teens come upon the minivan spaceship and discover the most amazing weapon ever (i.e. a baseball bat covered in tin foil):

“Though we have not fought valiantly many of our friends have perished for no other reason than this blazing eyed beast’s sick and twisted pleasure. Let them not die in vain! With this space stick we will avenge them, and we will win this wrestle between earth and space. Guys…”

Cue llama eyes charging and speech giver blowing up. I double checked – it definitely said “we have not fought valiantly” as oppose to potentially the line originally being “we have fought valiantly”. A small, but subtle difference. This may have been the best scene of the film. I don’t know anymore.
Anyway, back the plot, our alien llama has crash landed in a field, smoothly exits his spaceship, and decides to kill some farm owners in their beds – motives unknown. The subtle nuanced horror of panning away from the grotesque scene with just terrified screams to curdle your blood is somewhat undone by flying tomato ketchup. Then, naturally the next step is for the teenage grandkids of this poor couple, Mel (nooo why?) and Floyd to stay at their house and on the day of the funeral to organise a house party. We also see some government type people investigating the spaceship marvelling at its technical abilities of being a minivan and then basically not doing anything about it. The vast majority of the film is then spent gaining some insights into American college kids and how they have fun at parties and deal maturely with relationship problems. I never want to see similar “sex scenes” ever, ever, ever again. All I will say is tongues and leave it to your imagination. About 20 minutes in you are begging for our fluffy alien invader to bring some excitement to the table.

Which he does…of a sort. Now, I am not going to lie – some of the death scenes, on paper, would have been great. I mean come on, a llama that can shoot laser beams out of its eyes with such intensity it causes cars and people to explode? A llama that can bite chunks out of people and accurately throw their entrails at passing girlfriends before dragging the body off to do God knows what with? A llama that has delicate little soft stuffed legs operated by an actor off camera that can beat people to death sometimes by not even making contact? I hear you asking how can this film have failed with such ingenuity behind the scenes? If you are asking that, you haven’t been reading this review properly. However, reality doesn’t quite live up to the conceptualised morbid humour intended for our teens to meet their doom as the special effects to pull it off are so bad they are just bad and make your jaw slacken with disbelieve at the infantile quality, instead of chuckle at poor yet at least budgeted special effects.

So, as you’ve probably guessed the rest of the film is basically this deranged alien llama taking out all of these annoying, worthless people sometimes one by one, sometimes en masse through electrocution in a hot tub as one example…with people somehow not noticing the “special effect” electricity sparks and the convulsing yet sometimes accidentally smiling people dead in the hot tub and deciding to step in themselves. And the Darwinian award goes to…But if you were worried this was a simple, if unexplainable, llama slasher film, there is of course a plot twist in that the alien wants to reproduce. By spitting green goo on one unsuspecting teen. Who starts to turn into a llama, at least partially, by gaining furry clothing extras that any top Hollywood costume designer would have been proud of, if they lived in Opposite Land. But it seems this is purely for the sake of procreation as our poor teen begins to pop out llama eggs in an epic display of what men think it would feel like for women to give birth. Did I really just say llama eggs?

I won’t spoil the ending as I know anyone will be dying to see this film after this glowing review, but what I will say is some humans survive. Shame. So, to collate my thoughts – a great premise, who doesn’t love the idea of alien llamas coming to earth that can blow stuff up with frickin’ laser beams and are clearly hell-bent on world domination? Using a classically trained llama in the role who brought menace to every scene and is worthy of a Camelidae Oscar, a smart move. All other decisions, from using classically untrained actors to buckets of goo and horrendous unnecessary close-ups of people’s mouths and faces for inconceivable reasons among an assortment of other terrible directorial choices – get in the bin. I wish this was one of those films that will make you chuckle as they are so bad they are good, but this is truly one of the worst efforts I have seen in a long time for what is supposed to be a credible film (as a college project for internal use only it may have been acceptable) and how it ended up on Amazon Prime is a true mystery. Nepotism? Bribery and corruption? I would recommend this as much as I would recommend using piranhas for your weekly grooming routine.

Also, a few final things worth mentioning. The entire film is replayed at high speed during the surprisingly long credits, so you can probably get the same viewing pleasure from just watching the credits. We are also introduced to the innovative directorial technique of pointing out that time has passed by displaying the message “Time Lapse”. This time lapse being an insignificant period of time in the grand scheme of things. Oh, and an amazing bonus scene at the end of the credits of the green goo being consumed – I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling a sequel is/was planned. Eek.

As a dad, I went im watching this in the hope it would be a good B movie.
It was, I hardly stopped laughing, both my 20 something kids loved it. We're watching it again, 3rd time this time this weekend

Hands down the best movie I have ever seen, a full on cinematic masterpiece. Dan’s shirts, the blood, the egg laying scene. It has changed me as a person, I will never be the same.

five stars

Well I heard about this film and had to see it!!
Yes it’s as bad as I had heard, but we laughed all the way though it. Looking forward to Llamageddon two!

Kids loved it we love B Movies and this is right up there, watch out for the black guy in it who has a different shirt on in every scene we turned this movie into a game with spotting the awesome continuity, great visual effects and even better sound your in for a treat 🤘🤘🤘

You just have to watch this movie. Haven’t laughed this much in ages!

For the dialogue and "acting" when the scientists examine the "spacecraft" - and the combat scenes where the llama uses its hooves to fight, I must give this film four stars.