The Wicksboro Incident

The setup of "The Wicksboro Incident" is quite good. An old guy, supposedly an electrical engineer who in the 1950s worked on a secret government project hidden away in a bunker, in the small town of Wicksboro Texas. His story is that he is the sole survivor of a government cover-up and that Wicksboro vanished after he fled. The return to Wicksboro by the old man and two documentary filmmakers reveals that there is no evidence remaining, and the entire town, along with the clandestine project is gone. Eventually a startling discovery is made. Using divining rods they locate and uncover the old underground laboratory. It is at this point that the wheels come off, and the story degenerates into nonsense, most of it with a hand held camera at night. The first half would make an interesting episode of the History Channel's "U.F.O. Hunters", the second half will do nothing more than induce headaches. - MERK

This movie is nothing short of pathetic. It has a boring, drawn out, inscrutable beginning that makes it hard to bother continuing to watch it at all.

I suppose it is someone's idea of cinema verité. It has all the amateurish production values of The Blair Witch Project but with none of the suspense.

There is no ending to speak of at all . . . yet I was glad to see it end. Truth is, being a die-hard, I set my DVD player at 1.5X speed about half way through . . . just to see my evening of pain end all the more quickly.

A complete waste of time.

Who makes this stuff?

I had absolutely no clue whatsoever what to expect before watching The Wicksboro Incident. I didn't read anything about it so I started watching it without being influenced by reviews or anything. The first half hour I was wondering if it was a documentary or a fictional movie. You could say that that is not bad because the acting was believable. It's only when the old dude started searching the shelter in the desert with a coat hanger that I was for 100% sure it was just a fictional movie. From that point on it got way less interesting, with some stupid turns in the story. Nothing much believable anymore, and so also more boring. I have to admit that there was a bit of suspense as well but the story was just not strong enough to make it good. And then the handy-cam filming, it will always be something I dislike. I don't get why they continue making movies like that because it really doesn't bring anything more besides being annoying.

"The Wicksboro Incident" might have been a small sensation had it been released a decade ago, before "The Blair Witch Project." Then again, maybe not. For one thing, "Wicksboro" wouldn't have existed if not for "Blair Witch," seeing as how it is a blatant rip-off--the same faux documentary homemade style, same basic story with UFO's tossed in, even some virtually identical scenes. But Wicks doesn't carry the gimmick to any kind of surprising, or even logical conclusion, and lacks the "this really happened and we found this footage buried in a hole in the ground" thing that made its predecessor so compelling. (I won't spoil the ending for you, but let's just say that where "Blair" had an eerily ambiguous ending, Wicks barely has one at all). And it doesn't help that there's only 30 or 40 minutes worth of material to fill its 90 minute length--a lot of repetition and worthless footage that any real documentarian would have edited out, further killing the illusion of reality.

Maybe if you've never seen Blair, you'll like Wicks to some degree--if you have a remote with a greased fast forward button.

The film started off really slow and meeting up with a guy to tell us his story at first he gave the impression he was crazy about aliens driving all over the place and using the thing he made up. But when they started getting followed and had to change cars it got better and when he did manage to persuade them to go out and look for the shelter on the night they still thought he was crazy untill they did find it that's when they took him serious u won't say anymore than that you have got to sit and watch it no matter how bored you get it also proves the USA cover up what we are not suppose to see even at all costs life or death