Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County |
USA • 1998 • 93m •
   • Directed by: Dean Alioto. • Starring: Benz Antoine, Kristian Ayre, Gillian Barber, Michael Buie, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Marya Delver, Katlyn Ducharme, Ingrid Kavelaars, Aaron Pearl, Dean Alioto, Bart Anderson, Gary Hetherington, Gareth Moses..     After a mysterious blackout, a son goes out to investigate and captures footage of actual aliens. When the aliens follow him and his brothers back to their home, all hell breaks loose.
|
Review:
Passing itself off as found footage and therefore an alleged true account of what really happened to this family and put on TV is perhaps the first clue in realising that this is all staged. Those who are in the know, will also realise that this is a remake of a much earlier film. I guess the only thing this and its predecessor has going for it is that it predates the Blair Witch Project which is largely, (at least commercially) responsible for starting the now annoying plethora of found footage nonsense.
In this case, we have a family gathering for Thanksgiving dinner. There's the usual cheesy dialogue that's supposed to represent real family banter, one of the younger brothers who wants to film everything and generally irritate everyone at the same time, the alcoholic mother who perpetually has a drink in her hand, along with the usual prejudice when one of the sisters invites an African American man to dinner as her date. Not long into the movie the house is plunged into darkness and on suspecting a mere blown fuse, 3 brothers including the cameraman (as he has a light), go to investigate the fuse box. On getting there they find that it hasn't merely blown but looks exploded and melted. At a neighbouring farm the brothers see flashing lights and find that a power transformer is damaged and sparking. Near to this they see what appears to be a landed U.F.O and 2 strange figures walking around. One figure uses some kind of red laser on a dead cow and with the 3 bothers seemingly incapable of remaining still, quiet and whispering, they are spotted and the 2 figuresaliens start coming after them. One of the brothers is shot in the hand with a red laser. Upon returning to the house, the brothers are all panicked and not making sense, generally scaring the others, and even with the burnt hand, no one in the house believes anything they are saying. The brothers break out the guns and start securing the house, even though the rest of the family think they're just playing a prank. However as this is found footage and of course no matter what's happening, there's always one who seemingly won't put down a camera, he plays back the tape and then they all start to believe there's something to the story. At this point a high pitched squeal incapacitates everyone except the young girl.
After this they make the plan to leave and head for the truck, but find that the engine is dead and the battery is all melted. They then hatch some cockamamie plan to switch out the battery with another which will waste time instead of just either making a run for it to the nearby road or simply trying another car.
On heading back to the house they hear noises upstairs and realise that one of the aliens has gotten in so they go to confront the intruder. The youngest brother goes to his room to change his pants and comes face to face with an alien who puts him in some kind of trance and checks out his camera. The alien leaves but is then barricaded in a nearby room. He uses his red laser to try and get out and gets shot through the door by one of the brothers. They open the door and see an alien lying prostrate on the floor. The footage is sketchy at best as no one wants to move out of the way in order to get a good shot of it
After all this the 2 older brothers head back out to the truck to try and get it started. An orb makes its way into the house and puts one of the sisters into a coma. The family hear gunshots outside yet are reluctant to open the door to check it out. The "dead" alien that was left upstairs is discovered missing. Matthew, the African American boyfriend advises that his car is just outside and he will go for help. which begs the question of why they didn't check out his car when they all went outside the first time. He's never heard from again. The remaining family then venture outside where they see no signs of Matthew or the 2 older brothers. They only find their badly damaged shotguns and see glowing red lights indicating the aliens approaching. Again they all run back into the house. The camera is left on a bench facing the room and they decide to wait it out. The girl who was in a coma is now deceased and the only thing left to do is to have a meal??! So they sit around the dining table and start picking at the food. The young girl leaves the room, presumably to let the aliens in. They enter, put everyone who's left in a trance and they calmly follow the aliens out of the house never to be seen again. One of the aliens spots the camera on the bench and with a Jedi like wave of his hand, disables the camera and the saga ends.
Throughout the movie we have experts such as a police sheriff, psychologist, film makers etc, cutting in who give their opinions on what's happening in the reviewed found footage, thereby cementing this as a real life abduction caught on film and not faked. The fact is, it is faked, as was the original film that this is based on and it has been faked badly. This is not scary or creepy, it's not well done, it's not amazing, but I agree that it does have good ideas, they've just been done very badly. I simply can't accept all the 1010 reviews on this as the family spent almost the entire time bickering and wasting time instead of just doing what they all wanted to do and that is LEAVING! If you finally agree that you're being besieged by aliens, with one of them actually being shot in your house, family members disappearing and then culminating in a family member dying, the last thing you would do is sit around and eat. You'd just make a run for it. Sitting around and waiting for them to break through a window wouldn't be an option, especially as they never bothered to try and board up any windows. The aliens have the power of space flight, lasers and mind control, but need to help of a young girl to open the front door as a wooden house and glass somehow stymies advanced beings. You don't need to look for flaws in this film as they are glaring and obvious. It's true that panicked people can end up doing some strange things and act out of character, but arguing that you need to leave only to end up staying for no good reason is not a reaction of alleged real life people. This film is garbage plain and simple and while no found footage movie has yet ever managed to convince me of its alleged validity, there are better ones out there than this.
Review by metalrage666 from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database