Sightings

USA • 2017 • 88m •

• Directed by: Dallas Morgan. • Starring: Dante Basco, Kevin Sizemore, Boo Arnold, Tahlia Morgan, Rawn Erickson, Jason J. Lewis, Stephanie Drapeau, Tiffany Heath, Pia Inca, Kathy Rose Center, Devin Sarno, Megan Petersen, Ron Fallica. • Music by: Brandon K. Verrett.

A sci-fi/thriller about a dysfunctional family who live on a ranch in TX. After a series of mysterious and disturbing events they discover they are being terrorized by a legendary creature in their woods. Ultimately, they must overcome their interpersonal conflict in order to unite and survive the extraordinary events that are taking place.

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Trailer

2:02

Review:

This movie seems to have everything going against it, being buried in AmazonPrime's sci-fihorror categories with an uninformative name and an even less informative description that seems to be eager to specify that it's a CHARACTER-DRIVEN film, as though making a film such as this were something they were ashamed of and wanted to have broad appeal.

There's nothing wrong with that, but specifying that it's a CHARACTER-DRIVEN film about some manner of paranormalcryptid thing seems needlessly insistent, like a fruit drink prominently displaying on its label that it's definitely a liquid drink made from water.

The film itself is fairly ordinary, filmed professionally and acted competently. The problem is, there isn't much to it beyond that.

The title, and the poster, showing what is very clearly a stereotypical giant "Grey Alien" type eye, is completely misleading. Early on into the film, we get the rug pulled out from under us; the supposed cryptid at the center of the film is a BigfootSasquatch! We even get some very clear shots of its hairy limbs shuffling just out of camera frame like real life Bigfoot sightings.

The protagonist is a recently retired sheriff who finds 3 bodies on his ranch. Suspicion falls on him and he does little to ease people's suspicions because he's a typical Movie Character Jerk in that regard. Throughout the film, we get the backstory unloaded on us that his wife left him, apparently afraid of Bigfoot as well, and she may or may not have gone missing. And now the Bigfoot is after his daughter!

The plot isn't really interesting, while the film seems to realize it's called "Sightings" and has an alien eye on the poster, and so haphazardly turns and starts to strongly indicate that Bigfoot might be an alien! There's even a brief Ancient Aliens hypothesis strewn in because that's what's hip with the kids these days.

The film seems very much aware of its limitations and has a "Don't show the shark" approach to its Alien Bigfoot, but it subsequently blows that by dragging the action out of the congested woods and out into wide open fields in the broad daylight. Now they can't avoid showing it, but they still manage to avoid it by never actually showing it on camera. We see the people running and panicked at something just a few feet to the left or right of them off-screen, or a snippet from the Alien Bigfoot's point of view, all the while avoiding anything more than a hairy arm or leg on screen.

Considering the lengths they went to to try to tie aliens with bigfoot, this was a big disappointment. It would be like a zombie movie trying to integrate cyborgs with its zombie, and then never showing us any part of either. The risk of putting together an unconvincing costume or puppet or bad CG is always there, but the route they ultimately took was flat out disappointing.

Review by Andariel Halo from the Internet Movie Database.