The shock and awe spin-off from a sequel that struggled to stand on its own two feet gets neon-drenched and blood-soaked on streaming

Making a feature-length spin-off from a single chapter of an anthology sequel has a whiff of creative bankruptcy about it, but if nothing else, Jason Eisener’s Kids vs. Aliens lived up to its title and then some.

The filmmaker who caught their big break winning the fake trailer contest for infamous box office bomb Grindhouse – which then segued into Hobo with a Shotgun becoming a full-fledged feature in its own right – took V/H/S/2‘s “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” and stretched it out to a still-breezy 75 minutes, and the results were as mixed as you’d expect from such flimsy source material being overextended.

Critics actually preferred it to audiences, though, with 58 and 38 percent approval ratings from either party on Rotten Tomatoes underlining that as enticing as the core concept was, Kids vs. Aliens never really managed to stand strongly enough on its own two feet to justify the need for a standalone movie.

As you can no doubt infer from the title, the story of a Halloween party going awry when visitors from outer space descend on the rager to start murdering everyone lives up to its billing with aplomb, and streaming subscribers have opted to usher in spooky season by placing it in the thick of a resurgence.

Per FlixPatrol, Kids vs. Aliens has been beamed up as one of the most-watched titles available on Google Play’s global charts, and it’ll be far from the last middling tale of blood-soaked rampages and neon-drenched nightmares to appear before we reach the final day on the calendar.