hampus_granberg
For a shaky-based film, this one has most of the clichés, the fighting, the alpha male, the chaos, the momentarily silence, hysteria, the strange little girl, and so on and so forth.Most critique of how these documentary-like movies progresses is aimed towards how everything obvious has to be written down in dialog, kind of like telling the audience to actually follow this real-life incident."I peed my pants, what's up with that?", "oh my god, he's looking right at us", "Beep-beep what the beep in the beeping beep?", all is pretty much the same story told again, again and again. All the things within the script has been done many times over, still it's one of the earlier home-movie settings with cheap cameras so I guess credit goes to the establishment of poor acting and experiment with modern horror. Still, it's very easy to see it's all fake, it bears the skin of Hollywood, and the aura of classic monster-movie set-up.Nowadays things are very hard to fake, and back in the day when the UFO hysteria started, people didn't know better. A platter thrown into the sky is the same kind of UFO yesterday as a photoshoped image is today, which is why alien-abduction, encounters, and foreign species hiding in society dissecting cows and livestock is highly unlikely. Ask yourself the question, if humans had the technology, why oh why would we send out scientists for millions and millions of dollars to spy on humans, in sloppy brutal heartless ways, so cold we'd just up and steal people from their houses, with no rhyme or reason butcher the galaxy for mere curiosity? Some schizophrenic monster alien beings who just happened to be so smart and civilized enough to build a ship, get to a random planet, and just start blasting away, or a really corrupt political system up in the sky? Not many things makes sense, but of course, as anyone else I'm very much human and can't handle facts above all that is mortal. However, in regard to the universe, whether or not they've been here for millenias slaughtering away for sport or intelligent progress, or just buzzing around doing aerodynamic dancing in the sky, it would be foolish to believe that we are alone in space. People always point to the heavens saying "The universe is endless", well, in order for aliens to exist it would take eternity, endlessness. Why? Because even if it's a small chance, it's an endless chance of other chances that something else would exist, so to those who says aliens aren't real, it's blunt stupidity to believe. Yet to believe they'd come here to melt our brains or mutilate cows, is very very far-fetched, and very very blunt to assume.And back to the movie, two final thoughts on what makes it fake. The actors are actors, they have appeared in other films, so there, that's it, end of story.The other thing is that whenever an alien encounter occurs, electrical gear always seem to fidget around getting wound up either broken, blasted, texting or beeping strange and incoherent messages, burned, frozen, or plain simply dead, yet magically enough the camera with which some lonely individual always carries around for no definite reason never ever has any problem, now isn't that a real mystery to think about?For inspirational purpose, I'd recommend The Fourth Kind (Another very much fake movie, but still with more spirit to it, and an actual Hollywood movie, not shaky and dull), and in shaky horror over-all, all the paranormal activity movies, and Blair witch project.And of course, for all real film alien fanatics, X-files, a must see series. And as strange as it may sound, Ancient Aliens series. Its pseudo-science, may be many corners cut by the director to add more spice, with a 23-problem to it always following and seeking out a special occurrence of random numbers, getting what you see, and yet it would be such a cool story, both in film-making as reality, because in depth they twist every historical fact towards aliens. In romanticized perspective, it's really awesome! But like I said, it's not a believers words coming from my mouth, just one very fascinated by the mystical world.
emma s
Looking at the plot summary, I had hopes for this film. I'm a fan of the mockumentary horror sub-genre, and to find one about alien abduction, I thought this could be interesting viewing. Unfortunately, if you go in with the same hope for a frightening, clever horror/thriller, you will also be disappointed. The film starts with a family at thanksgiving, who experience strange happenings, which they initially attribute to an electrical storm. The start is very slow, and in my opinion, is filled with a very mundane, exceptionally poorly acted dialogue of the family and their background. Unfortunately, this is a running theme throughout the film, and the boring plot of the family and the characters overshadows any morsel of suspense and horror throughout the film. Actual activity is very few and far between, and any elements involving the aliens are distracting due to the obvious use of human actors in plastic masks - especially in the end scene where they appear to be wearing black rollnecks and jeans! There are many other scenes as well, which entirely detract from the atmosphere -such as when the mother runs out of the house in a panic, yet through the whole film never fails to spill a drop of her wine, let alone put the glass down for even a second.I think this could have been better if; 1. The actors were any good. Many a time, they was appallingly unbelievable and very obviously dictating from a script and failing to capture any resemblance of fear. There is a handful of instances where there are interviews with 'experts'. Again, the acting of these characters is abysmal and verging on bizarre when they decide a good character would be a British rock star in a 'cor blimey' accent dressed in a tiger print jacket. The mind boggles. 2. The writers actually contributed a script that enabled the viewer to empathise with the characters. As best they were an annoying irritant, where you clock-watched their experiences in the vain hope something bad actually happened to them. Bar one character who plays the boyfriend of one of the sisters, I would even go as far to say the viewer is left with no choice but to actively dislike the characters. In summary, I wouldn't waste an evening's viewing on this. It is a shame, as the concept and idea could have played out so much better with just a better cast, script and direction. For the horror/mockumentary style of film, there are far better examples out there more worthy of your time, even on a very modest budget with unknown actors. The producers really missed a trick with this one.
