Abductees

This was shown after Alien 3 today and I couldn't look away. It was an impressive mix of video and animation. "Abductees" were shown on videos or through voice overs while it cut into animations of what they were describing. The descriptions and the visuals complement each other perfectly and I was quite affectve by the situations (which is unusual for a short because they usually have little time to get us engaged with the characters). Maybe this worked because you assume the people are telling the truth (and are not just actors for the purpose of entertainment). And whether or not they are genuine, it's still quite powerful.

If you ever see this available on TV or at a festival (which I doubt, its from 1995), it's definitely worth a viewing.

7/10

This is a very odd film in many ways. First, the cartoon style is very splashy and constantly changing--with many types of animation interspersed with rather warped looking video of people. The film consists of many interviews with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and they tell their stories. There is no narration but it's interesting how the film maker pieced it all together to show that their accounts are completely at odds with each other. In other words IF alien abductions are true, then there are a huge number of different alien species coming to our planet to mess with us! This actually is quite telling and makes the film worth seeing. However, be advised that the strange animation style is certainly not for everyone. Also be advised that some of the storytellers talk about having gone through regression therapy and hypnosis to restore these memories--and these practices are HIGHLY dubious and unreliable.

By the way, this strange short can be found in a DVD collection entitled "Cartoon Noir". It's a collection of strange avant garde films that really have nothing to do with Film Noir and would probably not be appreciated by most viewers. Of the six films included, ABDUCTEES is by far the best. The rest, sadly, made my brain hurt.

Using a mix of images, animation, interviews and hypnotherapy regression, the film shows the experiences and feelings of a group of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

This short film was on late on TV one night and I thought I'd give it a stab. The subject matter is always interesting and it is hard to do a really bad film on the subject and this short keeps to that rule by being inventive and punchy. The subjects all talk to camera or in voice over about their experiences while visually these are represented by a variety of styles of animation. This mix of talking heads (both in hypnosis and normal) works really well. I don't know if I was totally convinced as to the truth of the whole affair but there was so much going on that I didn't have a great deal of time to really to question all that I was seeing and hearing.

The animation is well done by several animators and it really helps bring the words to life. While there is obviously room for artistic license, the voiceovers match very closely with the visuals and they both manage to enhance each other and make for a better, fuller short.

Overall this is not intended to be a very factual short that makes a compelling case that this stuff is real, it simply presents testimony in such a way that is interesting and entertaining to watch and leaves it up to us to decide for ourselves – nothing is pushed down our throats or mocked – it just `is'. Worth a watch out of curiosity – there are better, longer films on the subject but this is short, punchy and involving.