Earth To Echo (2014, Dir. Dave Green, USA) (Cert: PG/PG) ***

Starring: Astro, Reese Hartwig, Teo Halm

Tuck (Astro), Munch (Hartwig) and Alex (Halm) are three young friends in a small town in Nevada. Unfortunately, their friendship is threatened by the construction of a motorway through their street, forcing them all to move. At the same time, strange interferences with electronic devices cause the kids to go off exploring their cause and they find a small creature from space who they name, Echo.

Simply put, Earth To Echo is a movie with a gimmick. Originality is somewhat lacking here and the film obviously owes a debt to a number Spielberg-related projects from the 80's (The Goonies (1985) in particular)

but this time there's a twist in that the film bears relation to the "found footage" film. Found footage films have been fairly common in the last fifteen years (especially in these financially trying times because these films tend to cost very little money to make) but they've been almost entirely in the horror genre. Bringing into a film for much younger audiences makes for an interesting spin on the idea and being in science-fiction, where special effects are often king, the ways of swinging the camera about in an "amateurish" fashion help hide that there isn't as much CGI as you might think, although a scene involving a truck that serves as the key set-piece of the movie is rather underwhelming.

Most of the film's runtime is spent in the company of our child leads, all of who have either a backstory or a personality. Alex, who has been shuffled from home to home as a foster child comes the closest to having both a past and a defining characteristic, but falls a little short as a character, more as a fault of the writing than anything else. Undoubtedly, the best character is Munch, the neurotic and eccentric comic relief who is pretty amusing on occasion.

However, outside of the occasional highlight from the performances and the gimmick, the film falls flat in terms of story. By the film's end, it will become painfully clear that the plan of the antagonists makes very little sense. Speaking (or rather, writing) of the antagonists, these are a very different breed to the well-intentioned investigating forces in E.T The Extra Terrestrial (1982). Whilst not entirely nefarious in their motivations, what little we see of them comes across as very threatening very quickly. What results are characters who are, ironically, no threatening at all.

Needless to say, there are plenty of faults with Earth To Echo and compared to many of the films it could be compared to, right up to the relatively-recent Super 8 (2011) it falls short as underdone and derivative. However, it does make for a somewhat interesting experiment and does quite well given that the found footage subgenre isn't exactly consistently brilliant in its usual horror home. If you're undecided on the film, give it a miss, but it's not a total dud of a movie.