Alien Abduction: Rapimenti Alieni

Let me start by saying this: I rate movies based on the genre, acting and technical work. I might rate a sci-fi 10, and then go on to rate The Shining 9. Different genres has different criteria!

Now for Alien Abduction.

I don't scare easily, so when I started this movie, I were expecting some cheap laughs, and no real horror-moments.

Well, I have to say I were fooled!

This movie actually succeeded in scaring me several times, and the acting is pretty good.

I thought I'd had enough of "found tapes" movies, but I definitely want more now! I rate this 7, because it's one of the better movies of the genre.

Worth a watch!

I had to give it a 5 out of 10 because it is the best hand-held video-cam movie I've seen yet. The characters seem real, and likable, and the performances are pretty good. This beats the daylights out of Cloverfield and every other "found" video I've seen. There are actually some aliens in this one and the effects are fairly well done. The video quality is also the best I've seen so far. Even though the scenario has been used all too often, this one has, all I've seen so far, beat hands down. Is it a great movie? No. Is it a good one? No. But it is fair. It is entertaining and, if you like the found video types, it is worth a look.

I'm going to start this with some constructive criticism: you know what failed here? The subject! After Grey Skies, Dark Skies, or to make more of a connection, Skinwalker Ranch the plot becomes somewhat used already and you are quite familiar with everything that's going on. It was the one thing that really managed to bug me, so, all in all, I had to focus on other aspects of the movie.

The acting was good, mostly believable, the characters depicted a normal family, the decisions taken during the movie were natural, the encountering scenes OK, so on a scale of one to ten, I labeled it with a 5! But I may have been a tad bit hard on it. Probably it will have a grade of a little over 5 in the end when the votes will come flushing.

Anyway, for found footage fans I will recommend it, for horror fans, again, you can do a lot worse than this, and for someone out there that is really bored, give this a try.

As I said from the title, the execution is the key. They did a good job, sad they decided to use this subject. Again!

How on earth does this film have a 4.8 average? I know some people automatically pan "found footage" movies, but give me a break. This is beautifully executed, tense as hell, and worthy of your time. The camera work deserves special mention, managing to both look like camcorder footage and serve as a clinic on how to work in low light and brilliant light to excellent effect. The sound design is brilliant as well - I watched this with headphones on and found the experience entirely immersive. In short, if the plot description interests you, don't be swayed by the low rating. This is a fine flick, as good as any found-footage film I've ever seen, and it's one of the scariest films I've seen - found-footage or not.

"Alien Abduction" is an example of a so-called 'found footage' movie. In other words, much, if not all the film is supposedly real and was filmed by victims of some sort of supernatural event. The best example was the hugely successful film The Blair Witch Project—a film that cost practically nothing to make and which earned many, many millions of dollars. It's odd, but I have seen very few such films, though I thought the Norwegian film "Trollhunter" was absolutely brilliant and is a real must-see.

When I looked through some of the reviews for this film on IMDb, I noticed that they were a mixed bag. Some really liked it but several didn't and complained that the genre is over-saturated and other films like "Alien Abduction" have already been made. I would agree with this sentiment, as although found footage films can be wonderful, after you've seen a couple, the well starts to run dry. Because of this, no matter how good Alien Abduction is, for many it's an example of too many and too late to care. If, however, you've not been exposed to these sorts of movies, then "Alien Abduction" is certainly worth your time.

The film is set around Brown Mountain in North Carolina—a place where many actual reports of glowing lights have been reported by many. Because of this Alien Abduction has an advantage because weird sightings have been reported in this area for years. Interestingly, I actually lived a couple hours from there and NEVER heard about such stories while I lived in North Carolina…but when I checked online, there were many, many reports. I am VERY dubious about all this, but apparently many people do believe aliens might be involved.

The story concerns a family that is going camping around Brown Mountain. They seem very ordinary in most ways—and this was a positive thing. Because they seemed just like other families in most ways, it made the supposed found footage more believable. The only oddity is that the youngest child supposedly was autistic and loved to film EVERYTHING—and that is supposedly how we got all this footage.

While the family has seen some weird lights, the enormity of the problem doesn't sink in until they happen upon about a dozen cars all abandoned— with doors open and belongings scattered everywhere. While searching through these vehicles, the men in the family are set upon by aliens; you know--the Roswell types you so often have seen in films. But, being a found footage film, you only catch tiny glimpses and it's all very hard to make out. What isn't hard to make out is that Dad disappears— taken by these creatures. Soon, the rest of the family is running for their lives and the aliens seem content at picking them off one at a time.

So is the film any good? Yes. I think it was constructed very well. I loved the music—it was probably the best thing about the film and really helped build the tension. Additionally, the acting was believable and I liked the footage seen at the very end of the video camera being tossed out of the spaceship (which, by the way, was also used at the beginning). All in all, a tense and exciting film in a glutted genre.

By the way, if you do watch, don't turn off the credits as you'll get to see what appear to be interviews with folks who have seen these strange lights at Brown Mountain—though, interestingly, none of these people have claimed to have seen aliens.