On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky

Not exactly revealing, nor quality if you've watched Hellier. This docs crew tries but falls short. The story telling struggles in cadence, narrative quality, and it feels aimlessly. Unfortunately this doc doesn't go beyond superficial, but hope they nail the next one.

On The Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky is my first On The Trail Of UFOs film but not my first Small Town Monsters film. This was the most anticipated film for me in their kickstarter campaign.

And one I highly enjoyed. Not only does it focus on UFO sightings but we cross through and touch on lore of Mothman, Braxxie (Flatwoods Monster), Men In Black, Indrid Cold and UFO sighting theories such as: Are they related to energy sources nearby, the military or the Hollow Earth Theories.

Put together with narration, beautiful sweeping scenery, recreations to go along with eyewitness accounts and interviews if you're interested in any of these topics, you're in for a good time.

If not, at least you'll walk away with an in depth list of locations to eventually visit and hopefully witness something yourself.

Props to Shannon LeGro, Seth Breedlove and the Small Town Monsters crew.

I've been following STM for a while since I saw The Mothman of Point Pleasant, and these guys have a lot of great stuff. Sadly this film shows nothing mind blowing and at times it feels like the film is all about Shannon LeGro and her journey of getting a good UFO story. There were moments I felt like I wanted to turn if off because everything was dragging on for too long. The interviews of people that had encounters felt simply boring.

But what really caught my attention was when they started talking about Woodrow Derenberger and his meeting with Indrid Cold. This is where the doc shines in my opinion. Something I think STM should aim there focus on. A case that really deserves more attention.

In the end, a decent UFO documentary but nothing i would watch again.

This is made for entertainment above all else. The goal is to give the viewer reason to hide under their blankets at night. At times it succeeds, with creepy atmospheric music and a culture that exists in a permanent Halloween mode after the sun sets. Many times, I thought that there is something more profound to cover about these forsaken mining towns and their neglected people, who cling generationally to hopes of an otherworldly observer. Abandoned coal mines are truly haunted places, filled with tragic stories of crushed hopes and dreams, squashed beneath the light of day. Why then, does West Virginia want to preserve coal as the cornerstone of its economy? Perhaps that's what the UFOs want to know.

As someone who loves a well done UFO story but comes from a skeptical angle, I keep an open mind with shows like this, hoping for some new information to shift the needle toward belief. There are new accounts that I had never before heard, but many of the sightings seem to omit the most glaring possibility, that these UFOs are satellites. I was amazed to not hear a single mention of that possibility, particularly toward the end when they go into a field for a "dark sky" viewing of a tiny red object making a slow transit high up in the atmosphere. No one pulls out their iPhone to check if it's an iridium satellite passing overhead.

To truly break new ground, a documentary like this needs more honesty, and has to get the more common explanations out of the way and demonstrate why they don't completely explain the accounts. But this is mainly for entertainment, so we pretend along.

There is a great fictional UFO film to be made here, threading some of these accounts into a cohesive story, using this setting. I would gladly pay to see that.