The Phoenix Incident

This movie is making me noxious and gives me headaches because of the idiotic camera shakes.

It is not watchable.

And I am tired of those found footages movies.

The Phoenix Incident starts off nicely, inspired by actual phenomena and using mockumentary approach to cover the issue. Characters, both from recording and supposed interviews, are relatively convincing. This is one of the better groups seen in found footage genre that audience can easily invest on. Unfortunately, persisting problem of jerky cam, cumbersome editing and frantic off screen view are dominant. One or two might be bearable, but the culmination of them all eventually hampers the movie.

This mockumentary is a collection of tapes surrounding the event of alleged alien or UFO sighting back in 1997. It follows the group of young men as its main plot and then displays the accounts reflecting back to the fated night as well as possible cover up. Most cast of this type are random journalists or awkward family, this one has better on-screen characters, at least before the screaming and blabbering start.

They seem believable as a group of friends, they may fumble with occasional juvenile antic, but a decent cast goes a long way to give a sense of realism, which is the goal of found footage genre. The interview scenes also present air of seriousness, be it may the whistleblowing dialogue or the eyewitnesses accounts.

However, the transition is poor and the camera work is abysmal. For guys whose hobby is filming, these on-screen characters are not handy with camera. This shaky cam can be disruptive, especially towards the latter half where the events are revealed. The movie shows some special effects, presentable yet only a few seconds each.

The movie shows promise early on, but just like many before it, the intrusive shaky cam and awful editing ruin it.

I have seen many found footage movies and some of them are quite good, as they 1. allow the viewer to get an idea of the whole scenery and 2. as they give your eyes some calm moments. The viewer needs time to understand what's actually going on!

This movies doesn't do anything of that. It's really hard work to watch the found footage scenes, so shaky, the image even switches off completely for many times, the cam crashes against walls and the ground with wild movements, a tour de force for your eyes, so much that it gets really annoying. I wanted to shout out loud: stop finally moving!

While the story could have been very exciting (the basic idea is not bad), the 4 main characters sometimes behave like crazy. Just imagine someone dangerous follows you in the dark. And your first reaction is: shout as loud as possible, speak loudly, use your torch to show everyone within the next 2 miles where you are, and that ALL the time.That's what these 4 guys do. So empathy has no chance to grow for them. After a while of watching I thought: just stop filming guys and get caught finally.

The pseudo-documentary style of the movie is OK, if you like that kind of movie. To me it's a little bit too much of history channel's "the secret alien files" kind of stuff: the camera, the editing, the light of the interview scenes - just the way those scenes are made I have seen before too many times on TV. The director clearly needs to find a way to make his individual kind of movie. Now it's just a collection of copied elements. Truly better than "sharknado", but not much better than every pseudo-documentary on TV.

I've watched the movie because i have always believed there is more than us here or come here etc. The time line of when this happen and what i saw about this same time and when i saw some of the pics of the flying objects i couldn't believe what i saw they were the exact thing or so darn close it scared me. I went to work working nights one evening i headed down the highway around 11pm heading to the hospital on ft stewart where i worked night shift I had 14 plus military years 3 honerable discharges known many Military personnel and have seen much but what i saw on my way to work was not something that happens as i was driving i saw far off to my left toward the ocean there was a low light in the sky i always look because to verify if a plane by a blinking light there was none just bright lights it was heading west by the time i crossed the highway 80 and headed south toward I -16 this craft had turned and there was several open fields between me and the highway and some small tree lines.All of a sudden this air craft appeared and it was just over the tree line, iam so curious hanging out my window and looking i could see the complete bottom and nothing but lights and the biggest thing that amazed me there was no sound if i could be put to sleep i could give a complete discrption of this craft only wishing i could of got pics by the time i hit the over pass to I-16 it turned and headed back out east toward the ocean and disappeared got to work shooken asking everyone on the military base i knew if there was anything we had that could do this and have no sound ever. The answer was NO and this was at the same year and time all this went down

I'm a UFO fanatic, so I went into this movie with a certain amount of joy to see something different. Granted, I didn't have high expectations, after all, we know that horror and faux-documentary movies are not usually very good, however, the execution of this one was much better than I expected. With a good budget and use of camera techniques, the creators managed to create a film that, despite not being a marvel of special effects, contains well-designed scenes with good entertainment value.

The script is a bit heavy-handed, leaving much to be desired, but it manages to establish certain real-life connections with fictional events in a good way, creating a sort of historical universe within its own limits. The characters are, for the most part, typical cliché examples of movies of this type, but I've seen worse so I cut them some slack. The performances are decent, not the best, but what else can we expect?

Probably what I hated the most was the idiotic subplot about the alien-crazy guy. I found it unnecessary, cliche, redundant and even a bit cringe-worthy, mainly because it didn't add anything interesting to the scene and only served as a sort of punching bag of mysteries.

In the end, it's a short, entertaining movie that manages to combine real scenes with cinematic scenes and creates a somewhat interesting conspiracy story, which although affected by its delirious script and half-developed characters, manages to entertain for 1 hour and 20 minutes without major complaints. Also, the aliens and the development of the scenes is entertaining, as well as the multiple scenes from the POV of the military. It's worth it if you like the genre and feel like killing time.