Over the last decade The Asylum has become synonymous with low budget Hollywood rip-offs, which they playfully call mockbusters. These films are exact copies of their Hollywood counterparts, in fact many times The Asylum movies have nothing in common with their bigger budget brethren other than name. For those tricked by this ruse they often feel ripped-off, and to be fair their expectations are set for hundred million dollar budgets. This list is the top 5 mockbusters from The Asylum that surprise and prove that these guys aren’t out to just fool people into buying their products, they want to entertain as well.

Back in the mid 2000s Asylum teamed up with actor C. Thomas Howell and sparked a strange relationship in which Howell would go on to direct the sequel to this mockbuster and two others, The Day the Earth Stopped and The Land that Time Forgot. Directed by The Asylum producer and partner David Micheal Latt, this was the mockbuster that started it all. Coming on the heels of the Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise War of the Worlds it was a surprisingly good adaptation and while the big budget effects of the Hollywood version are missing, it mostly hits the same marks. The story tells of a man named George Herbert who is separated from his wife and child when a Martian invasion begins. He tries to make his way to Washington, D.C. to reunite with them as the world is torn apart. But civilization is laid to ruin when a race of super aliens ultimately invades Earth!

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