Plot

An Arizona logger mysteriously disappears for five days in an alleged encounter with a flying saucer in 1975. His co-workers endure ridicule and contempt as they are wrongly accused of murder.

In 1975, a group of five men are driving home after working in a forest when they see a mysterious bluish-white light. Travis Walton (D.B. Sweeney) curiously leaves the truck to investigate the strange phenomenon -- the light captures him resulting in the beam teleporting him up into the flying saucer. The other four men report what had happen to their friend. Of course, no one believes them. The movie deals with the account of Travis Walton's ordeal and escape from what appears to be a hibernation chamber. Inside the small chamber, he is wrapped in a membrane. He frees himself only to find out there are many chambers with dissimilar specimens. Eventually, he is confronted by one of his small-statured captures who Travis punches in the face. After begin missing for five days, Travis is back on Earth and manages to make his way to a phone booth to call his home. His friends arrive at a gas station only to find Travis naked, bruised and scared. The next few days, he is able to recollect the memories of his encounter aboard the spacecraft.—geginn

This movie deals with the strange events which happened on the evening of November 5, 1975 in Snowflake, Arizona. Travis Walton works with a group of loggers under a government contract in the White Mountains. When he and his co-workers drive home after work, they saw a bright crimson light and encounter a flying saucer. Curious to learn more, Travis gets out of the truck for a closer look and is struck by a blue-green beam of light. His co-workers escape in terror and they inform the police that Travis has been abducted by space aliens. For the next five days, Travis disappears without a trace and the loggers endure ridicule and contempt as they are accused of murder. When he reappears, first he didn't remember that he was gone, but into time, the terrible memories come back.—Peter W. Simeon <simeon@imdb.com>

On November 5, 1975 in Snowflake, Arizona, logger Travis Walton (D.B. Sweeney), and his co-workers - Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), Allan Dallis (Craig Sheffer), David Whitlock (Peter Berg), Greg Hayes (Henry Thomas) and Bobby Cogdill (Bradley Gregg) - head to work in the White Mountains.

Driving home from work, the loggers see an unearthly light in the distance through the treeline. Upon investigating, they come across an unidentified flying object. Curious to learn more, Walton gets out of the truck to examine closer, only for the hovering object to reach and strike him with a bright beam of light, hurling him several feet backwards. Fearing Walton has been killed, the terrified loggers escape from the scene. Rogers decides to go back to the spot to retrieve Walton, but he is nowhere to be found. Going back to town to report the incident, the loggers are meet with skepticism by Sheriff Blake Davis (Noble Willingham) and Lieutenant Frank Watters (James Garner). They are suspected of foul play, something believed that quickly spreads over their small town, leaving them as social outcasts.

Watters realizes there was a great deal of tension between Walton and Dallis and that Dallis has a criminal record, leading him to believe this is a murder investigation. Watters also discovers a tabloid newspaper in their truck with headlines about aliens, hinting that they used the article to concoct their story. The loggers are accused of murder and are threatened by Travis' brother Dan Walton (Scott MacDonald). After a large search party found no sign of Walton, the loggers are offered the chance to take a lie detector test. After the testing is complete, Rogers is outraged that the results are not shared and he and "his guys" refused to return the next day to retake this. After the loggers leave, the test's administrator informs Watters and Davis that, with the exception of Dallis (whose results were inconclusive), the loggers seem to be telling the truth.

Five days later, Rogers receives a phone call from someone claiming to be Walton. He is found at a Heber gas station, alive but naked, dehydrated and severely traumatized. A ufologist questions Walton but he is thrown out and Walton is taken to a hospital. Rogers visits Walton while in the emergency room and ends up telling Walton that he leave him after he was struck by the beam of light but came back to get him. Walton appears enraged by this and turns away from Rogers who blames the whole incident on Walton for getting out of the truck. During a welcome home party, Walton suffers from a mental breakdown and flashback of the abduction by the extraterrestrials.

In his flashback, he awakens inside a slimy cocoon. Breaking out of its membrane, a puzzled Walton finds himself in a zero-gravity alien environment inside a cylindrical enclosure, whose walls contain other similar cocoons. Struggling in the low gravity, he breaches a nearby cocoon by chance, horrified to discover that this contains decomposing human remains. Exploring further, he drifts towards a neighboring area, seeing several humanoid figures below him. Drifting uncontrollably towards them, he surmises that the immobile figures are actually spacesuits, one of them occupied by an extraterrestrial creature. Walton attempts to escape, but is apprehended by two extraterrestrial creatures who drag him down corridors full of terrestrial detritus such as shoes and keys before arriving in a bizarre examining chamber.

The aliens hold the struggling Walton to a raised platform in the middle of the chamber, stripping him of his clothes and covering him with an elastic material that completely restrains him. Despite Walton's terrified screams, the aliens clinically force him to undergo an experiment in which a gelatinous substance is shoved into his mouth, a long pipe is inserted down his throat, his jaw is clamped open and a device is stabbed into his neck. Overhead equipment then begins lowering towards him while fully conscious during the experience. After a needle-like ocular probe extends towards this exposed eye, Walton loses consciousness until finding himself back to Earth, disoriented and severely traumatized.

While interviewing Walton, Lieutenant Watters expresses his doubts about the abduction, dismissing this merely as a hoax. He notes Walton's newfound celebrity because of the tabloids' attempt to profit from his tale, believing that he had faked the abduction to become a celebrity. However, with the investigation closed, Watters is forced to abandon his pursuit and leaves town. Two and a half years later, Walton visits Rogers, now a hermit, and the two reconcile while they struggle with trauma over the past. The film's closing titles inform that in 1993, Walton, Rogers and Dallis were resubmitted to additional polygraph examinations, which they passed, corroborating their innocence.