The Horror Show
Alien Abduction
by Matt Beckerman
After the infuriating mess that was Almost Human, I come bearing the gift of another alien abduction film, appropriately called Alien Abduction. The problem with the former was that the film wasn’t a true alien abduction movie; it was more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So, a film titled Alien Abduction must be a true alien abduction movie, right?
Brown Mountain, North Carolina is well known for mysterious lights that appear in the area. Many people believe the source to be extraterrestrial. Some people in the area even claim to have been abducted by aliens. So, what does the Morris family decide to do? Go camping there. The Morris’ son Riley is autistic and his coping mechanism is his camcorder, so he records the entire event. Their first night the entire campsite is shrouded in a mysterious light and abruptly disappears. The following morning, the family decides to make their way home but gets lost in the process. The road they are following takes them to a tunnel littered with abandoned cars. The father, Peter, and his sons decide to progress through the tunnel. The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t as hopeful as it appears to be. A humanoid silhouette blocks their route of escape. Then, an alien figure makes its presence known by stepping out of the shadows, the men run in fear but in the chaos Peter is taken by the aliens. Their mother, Katie, takes charge and leads the remaining family members to a house they passed earlier. They are confronted by a redneck local, Sean, and he may be the Morris family’s last hope at making it out of Brown Mountain.
I swore that I was going to hate this movie, just based on my previous track record with alien horror movies. You know what? I didn’t. I didn’t love this movie. Overly, it was pretty average but also enjoyable. I didn’t care much for the aliens as beefy foot soldiers taking people by force. I like the idea of aliens being these frail creatures that don’t need to use force because they have technologies to do the work for them. I think that would be more realistic, I use that term loosely. A couple of times they use these badass abduction beams. They even make a couple of skill shots with them. A person get’s abducted through a hole in the ceiling and their body contorts, breaks, and bends to fit through the small hole. It was so brutal and I was totally unprepared for it. I feel like the movie is supposed to build up to the moment inside of the ship. However, all you can see are shadows and colors because the aliens are covering the lens with their fingers the whole shot. That’s not the worst part; they also show you it to you at the very beginning of the movie. It wasn’t an abridged clip it was the exact same scene. That was the moment I wanted to see more than anything and all I got was the same hard to see piece of crap again. It’s definitely a misleading build up with absolutely no pay off.
I didn’t care for 5/6ths of the characters. I liked the idea of Riley, rather than Riley actually on screen. Riley was a plausible explanation for the filming because Riley was autistic and filming was his way of coping with the world. The intro to the movie explained that bit, but it wasn’t mentioned again for half the movie. Until that point I thought it was just an excuse used by the filmmakers as an after thought to cover up Riley’s poor acting. Children portraying normal children believably on film is difficult enough to achieve, let alone a child with disabilities. At no point was I convinced that Riley had autism, the only social construct he had trouble grasping was when it was appropriate to film or not.
On the other hand, Sean was a badass character. He was the only one who reacted believably to the situation. He also wrecked the aliens’ day. I propose to change the title of the movie to, “Sean: Alien Hunter.” He was an asshole with a heart of gold. He had flaws but also had everyone’s best interest in mind. He was prepared to make sacrifices. This movie may have changed my opinion of rednecks. Now I know if aliens hunt me that I need to make best friends with mountain folk.
I like found footage, for the most part. However, I’ve noticed most found footage films have the same ending, everyone dies or something similar. The most similar ending I can think of is the ending to Area 407. You’re lulled into a false sense of security then bam, movie over. I preferred the ending to The Sacrament, the characters actually live and share their film with the world. It’s mind blowing! It was also based on real events. Which leads me to my next point, the Brown Mountain Lights and Project Blue Book are real things believe it or not. That’s what makes this movie interesting. Found footage movies, to me, are about believability. There’s a small part of me that wants to believe found footage is real, I know it’s not but I want to believe. So, when a movie incorporates real world elements, it gives me hope.
The most interesting part of this movie was the aliens’ motives. We never get inside of the aliens’ heads and it’s never explicitly stated in the film, but it was pretty clear their motives are scientific or out of curiosity. It’s hard for humans to sympathize with non-humans; it’s just our nature. However, we can learn through Riley. In the beginning of the movie, Riley narrates his films with “Specimen 1” and etc while playing with insects. He continues to play with bugs the rest of the movie. To us, insects are lesser creatures and we study them and they really can’t comprehend what we’re actually doing to them. We’re the same to the aliens. They’re a greater life form and their reasoning and logic is beyond what we are capable of understanding. Like any threatened animal there are two basic responses that occur fight or flight and the movie focuses equally on both. I think we forget that we too are just animals. This movie does a great job in portraying humans as mere specimens. When you think of the movie with that in mind it’s much more entertaining. They’re just mice in an experiment. I couldn’t help but imagine an alien turning to another and saying in their language, “Be careful, they’re more scared of us then we are of them.”
Are we alone in the galaxy? I choose to believe that we aren’t, some would disagree. I like to take the movie as a warning. Our future alien captors are coming for us. If there’s anything Alien Abduction taught me, our fate is inevitable and we should be prepared to surrender. These people killed some aliens and ran off, probably really pissed off our future rulers. So, we just need to let them do their experiments and maybe after their done they’ll leave us be.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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