Horror Movie Review: Alien Abduction (2014)

Is anybody out there still enjoying found footage horror? Anybody? Tell the truth. Aren’t you just so tired of the pretence that what we’re seeing is real? The shaky camera work, the fuzz and sharp cuts, the out of focus images and screeching sound effects? The ever-growing knot of motion sickness in your belly and throat?

Yes, what is being described above is the worst of found footage and we’ve spoken countless times in countless reviews about it before. So why again? Simple, really… everything written above describes what you will experience watching the horridly titled Alien Abduction.

The directorial debut of Matty Beckerman, who shows a total lack of imagination with his paint by numbers alien horror movie. To call this nearly unwatchable is not hyperbole, from the moment it starts and what you get is an out of focus shot leading to the camera falling back to earth, the hope of something more than just another found footage horror dies.

Some text on the screen then informs us that the footage we’re about to watch came from that camera. Which was recovered by the US Air Force and has since been leaked online.

Our cameraman is the young boy Riley Morris (Riley Polanski) who is autistic and uses his camera as a coping mechanism.

One point there, for offering a plausible and understandable reason for why the camera keeps on rolling throughout this movie. Many found-footage horror creators should take note of this. If you want us to buy in, make it believable. That there is a reason your main character continues to film instead of running away as fast as possible.

Riley is on a family camping trip in Brown Mountain alongside his parents, older brother and older sister. That night, the trio of kids see lights in the sky that don’t move like anything they’ve ever seen before.

The next morning, while heading back down the mountain, the family are redirected by the GPS. Ending up at a tunnel that is blocked by hordes of seemingly abandoned cars.

This is the creepiest part of the movie, the only creepy part of the movie, as the family stare in disbelief at what they see. Cars just stopped in the road, empty of people yet all their belongings still inside. As if the occupants were just yanked from their cars suddenly.

What caused this? Well, it is called Alien Abduction so that should give you some sort of clue. As the family get out to investigate, their problems really begin and so do ours.

Whatever intrigue created by Alien Abduction goes out the window in a flurry of frustrating story decisions and infuriating visuals. Every time it does calm down and we get something relating to steady camera work, it offers nothing worth watching. The stuff you want to see, aliens and their abducting ways, is such a mess it just becomes a chore.

It’s outrageous that we’re still getting ‘films’ like this.




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Alien Abduction
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