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Synopsis

Fire In The Sky tells the based on a true story of Travis Walton, a logger in Arizona traveling home with his crew getting abducted by an alien UFO. Now I know what you’re thinking they can’t possibly stretch out a single abduction story into a full feature length horror film. Well do I have news for you. You’re right. But! You can stretch it out to about 3/4 of a drama and 1/4 of a horror movie.

Review

This movie came out just months before the pilot of The X-files that all featured an alien abduction. Alien abduction was in the air in the early 90s and this movie came out at the prime time with a wide release and failed at the box office.

I saw it in theaters when I was just 11, so I definitely have thick nostalgia glasses on. It is not a prefect movie. In fact narratively it is a real oddity. It spend most of the movie exploring the fallout and doubt around Travis’ friends story of his disappearance. In the last 1/4 of the movie we are treated with some of the most intense sci-fi body horror put on film, and I think that 20 mins still holds up. Instead of the cold sterile and clinical scenes with grey aliens that are described by most alien abductions, this film shows a terrifying matrix like goo cocoons with menacing and indifferent wrinkle monsters conducting horribly invasive surgeries. The terror of Travis is palpable and visceral.

After the reenactment of the abduction the movie just kind of stops.

Score

7/10