UFO ABDUCTION THE GREATEST FOUND FOOTAGE FILM YOU'VE NEVER SEEN

As a horror movie fanatic I absolutely love a good found footage film, but unfortunately most of them are mediocre at best. Stuff like Cannibal Holocaust or [REC] will stay in your nightmares for years to come and for us horror fans that’s a good thing! This genre is considered rather new, but it’s roots certainly go back far further than the underwhelming and overrated Blair Witch Project. UFO Abduction, sometimes referred to as the McPherson Tapes, is one of the earlier examples of found footage, but it was not widely distributed and therefore is rather obscure. Found footage fans know it well because it is debated by many (still to this day) that this abduction is real and it’s not a work of fiction. This debate rages even though there are director, producer and cast credits at the end. These earlier found footage films just scared the Hell out of people…the director of Cannibal Holocaust was arrested and actually had to prove that the cast was still alive!
  Because this movie is in the end a mystery, I don't want to ruin it by discussing actual parts of the film itself so let me just explain why UFO Abduction is so damn great. The film itself plays with your adrenaline...boring and mundane one minute and a confusing and convoluted rollercoaster ride the next. Watching a family play Go Fish when the lights go out may not sound too scary, but they are just settling you down to scare the Hell out of you again. One of the amazing things about this film is how much the slow spots actually help intensify your adrenaline rushes. Writer/director Dean Alioto really knew how to pace this film to make it seem so damn real. What also adds to the realism is the way everyone talks over each other like they’re in a Robert Altman film or something. That’s how we really talk, without those nice perfectly written pauses. It makes this video seem so real and it is what so many found footage films fail to do. There are of course the video skips, blackouts and unfocused moments which are common place now, but back in the late 80s they were literally brand new and mostly unheard of to put in an actual film that was going to be released. The overall simplicity of the aliens and their costumes is perfect. The special effects are also very minimal and simple, but they succeed at making you think you see things in windows or crawling on ceilings that aren’t there…at least I’m pretty sure they aren’t there. For myself the intensity and realism are too much so I don’t tend to watch it before bed. The last time I did that I thought something was in my room with me. The direction is top notch and so is the actors’ ability to really convince the audience how ignorant or frightened or angry they are in this terrifying situation. It’s so perfect that I am stunned that all these people didn’t go onto bigger and better things in Hollywood. Who knows, maybe they really were abducted by aliens.

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