People in the Movie: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Pigeonhole: Thriller / Mystery
The Basics: This is a faux-documentary (or docufiction- as opposed to a mockumentary, which is comical) about a recently widowed psychologist named Dr Abbey Tyler (Jovovich) who comes to believe through some therapy sessions that several of her patients have been abducted by aliens. Abbey later discovers that she may also be an abductee, and as the movie progresses several people, including her patients end up dead or injured. Abbey’s daughter then goes missing and we are to led to think she was most likely abducted. Skepticism and questions are abound by Abbey’s colleagues, as well as the town sheriff (Patton), who knows a “secret” about Abbey’s dead husband. The film takes place in Nome, Alaska.
Recommendation: The presentation was very interesting, which, in and of itself is worth a glace (I will discuss this below). There are a few good thrill moments, and I can see where the director wanted to go – but too many sub plots and “holes” clogged it up to make it a great film. X-Files fans (the X-Philes) would really like this.
My Take: **spoiler alert** The film opens with Jovovich informing the audience she is portraying Dr Abigail Tyler, and that the audience will see her portrayal, as well as “real interviews, footage, and audio bits” from the “real” Abbey Taylor, as well as others connected to this story - but whose names have been changed for their privacy. So what the audience sees through portions of the film (at least 50+%), are split screens showing the Jovovich, et. al. film, along with the “real footage” in the other screen, in a very documentary-like style. I applaud the writer-director to investing the resources to give the movie this feel, essentially creating 2 movies then morphing them into one.
The actors performances were average. Jovovich was believable throughout, but Koteas who was portraying Tyler’s colleague and confidant, Dr. Abel Campos, took his skepticism about the abductions to an almost to a borderline caricature level, and at other times he seemed to have a confused/concerned look on his face that did not seem to fit with the action in the scene. Sheriff August (Patton) plays the “I need to arrest and blame somebody” cop while it clearly appears that there is “something” going on in Nome that is beyond typical explanation.
Here are some elements brought into the film, while each one interesting, puts too much (overall) on the plate of the viewer for this 100 minute film:
- Abbey’s husband was supposedly killed by an intruder. There are clues throughout and we learn this to not be true, thus creating its own subplot.
- Abbey’s daughter Ashley is blind from conversion disorder (hysterical blindness, basically) likely due to her father’s death.
- We never see the aliens, but we see about a 2 second glimpse of a possible UFO.
- While it appears some of abductions are for at least medical experimentation, others might be more personal.
- The aliens apparently can posses or control people to some degree.
- There is an entire subplot brought up that these aliens speak Sumerian. Different characters are heard uttering phrases in the language while under hypnosis, or on the video and audio recordings. Abbey then learns of a Dr. specializing in the study of Sumerian, so he comes up to Nome to investigate with her. (A slight reach, at best.)
Final Thought/Extras/For Fun: What I find interesting is that a segment at the beginning and end of the film ask the audience to make up its own mind about alien abductions, yet, the presentation leaves you no other alternative… I watched this on cable, and the DVD/Blu-Ray may have some additional insight, extras, etc… The setting being in Nome, Alaska, is not really significant for the movie, however, it is noted that the FBI has, in fact, investigated true disappearances from Nome, although there was no FBI element in the movie…
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