Alarum, released on January 17th of 2025, is one of the best (and only) movies released on January 17th of 2025. This movie is a spy thriller that takes place in Poland, but the main appeal most of us saw in it was the fact that it was filmed in our very own hometown. Knowing that a movie being filmed with Rambo himself piqued the interest of many Oxford residents. I first watched this movie knowing that it was rated at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I didn’t let that ruin my movie-going experience. I went into this movie with the intent to enjoy it, and that’s what I did. But to give you a good explanation of why I enjoyed it, I have to break it down. 

The Setting

To start, the setting of Alarum is impeccable. Alarum is set in Poland, a country with deep roots stemming from Slavic tribes first settling down in the land. But as everyone definitely knows, filming in Poland is expensive. But there is one place that is cheap to film at and resembles Poland (because it has buildings), Oxford. In hindsight, it’s a bit of a no-brainer. Poland also has a place to buy bagels, too many four-way stops, and sloppy drunk college students every Saturday night. Alarum and Oxford were a match made in heaven. 

One of my favorite parts about this movie was being able to see a place I live near on the big screen. It was somewhat surreal seeing Mike Colter walk on the same sidewalk I had just last week! But what was even cooler is that I could tell the producers liked filming in Oxford. You wanna know how I know? Thanks for asking, I know because you can literally see the Ohio flag in the background. Now from what I know (and I could be wrong here), Poland has no reason to have a flag of Ohio hanging next to their country’s flag. So the only explanation is that they loved filming here. And they must’ve loved the people too, because you can see all of the people who wanted to watch the filming happen in the background. They could’ve just photoshopped these things out, but they didn’t, so they must’ve just liked filming here. In reality, Oxford doesn’t fit what Poland should look like, which only makes me believe that they put minimal effort into finding a good filming location.

The Plot

Most movies have somewhat simple plot development. Act 1 to Act 2, then Act 3, then end credits. Pretty basic stuff overall. But just because it’s basic doesn’t mean that this format is bad. It just means that the content of these acts has to stand above the rest to make a lasting impact in the world of film. Alarum opts to take a leap with their movie and make the plot the same as almost every other spy thriller out there. This was a brave move on the writer’s part. A movie that has the same plot as a hundred other movies? You’re insane! But that’s what I like about this movie. They decided to be ambitious. 

I like to see the paper thin plot of this movie as a positive rather than a negative for a couple reasons. One, I don’t have to get attached to any of the characters. Alarum opted to spend a lot of time (a minute) to introduce their characters and really make us care about them. Unfortunately, they failed. But because of this, I wasn’t invested in them at all. I didn’t care about whether or not they died, because I couldn’t even remember their names. And two, I didn’t have to pay attention. As we all know, Gen Z loves their screens *wink wink nudge nudge*, so I couldn’t keep my hands off my phone when watching. Usually this would be bad because you can’t follow the plot. But this time, I could start watching again whenever I wanted and it wouldn’t matter. I’ve basically watched this movie 20 times, so why do I need to pay attention? In reality, Alarum has a sad excuse for a plot that doesn’t even try to keep the viewer engaged.

The CGI

Many movies you see nowadays are filled to the brim with CGI. CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is any special effects that are added to a movie or TV show after the filming takes place. Most movies need something like this to properly portray out of this world sights, like Godzilla or Timone and Pumba, but Alarum opts to use it for even better means. Due to this movie being a spy thriller, they had to add an explosion somewhere. This place just so happened to be my “favorite” place in Uptown Oxford, O Pub. But luckily, I didn’t have to worry too much about my “favorite” place, because the explosion didn’t look real whatsoever. The chunks of wall flew at the camera like I threw a bomb at a wall in Roblox. 

But this isn’t the only bit of CGI the VFX department used. The directors of Alarum didn’t want whatever happened with Alec Baldwin to happen again (yikers…), so they instead opted to use fake guns and pair them with fake blood. When I saw a bad guy take out a gun for the first time in the movie, I was quite worried. I loved all of these characters equally, and I didn’t want them to get shot and killed. But when I saw that the blood coming out looked like ketchup, I knew the only answer was that the characters weren’t canonically dead. It looked like they went out of their way to make the blood look like ketchup. In reality, the CGI in Alarum left everything to be desired. The lackluster CGI was one of the funniest parts of the movie, which is unfortunate because it sounded like they actually did try to make jokes. 

When I said I enjoyed this movie, I didn’t necessarily mean it was a good movie. It actually was pretty terrible. But a good movie isn’t something that has the best special effects. It isn’t something with the best acting. It isn’t even something with the best story. It’s something that the viewer enjoyed watching. And I enjoyed watching it. By laughing at it. This movie was so unbelievably bad that all I could do was laugh at it. From the fact that you can see Skyline in the background in some shots to the bright red tomato sauce they tried to pass as blood, Alarum made for a fun night of messing around with friends. I give Alarum 5 big booms. To bid you farewell, I want to leave you with my favorite review I read of Alarum on Rotten Tomatoes. From Jason R, “Sylvester Stallone looks like a wax sculpture of Sylvester Stallone.”