Alien Abduction (1998) is Dean Alioto's remake of the McPherson Tapes. With TV funding and a screenwriter, his idea of an alien abduction caught in real time flows better. It also has Edge. It’s on the fringes of horror. Free from the restraints and demands that come with studio resources, it ratchets up the tension by stripping down to the essentials of horror: fear of the unknown + lack of information.
Alien Abduction DVD. I get a strong lack of effort vibe from this cover.
There are distant glimpses of the aliens through an unstable handheld camera as they go about their plan. The gap between the family's ignorance of the intruders’ motives and the strangeness of the situation creates a horror that doesn’t pause to explain itself to the audience.
Aliens doing an autopsy on a carcass. And maybe posing for a Lazerhawk album cover.
The POV of the camera, courtesy of the youngest brother, makes us one with the family trapped in the house while non human entities stalk the property. We feel their frustration and sheer fright.
After the power goes out—or is cut deliberately—the movie is mostly lit from the camcorder’s front light.
The second part of the formula I mentioned comes from an era before an overabundance of information on any topic was available to anyone with a device and an internet connection.
Alternate DVD cover for Alien Abduction. Not exactly an improvement from the previous one
In my previous entry I pointed out the happy accident of how an impersonal curating algorithm presented a trend in the recent past of the entertainment industry. This entry points to how a form of entertainment has been dulled in its effectiveness to terrorize because of tech advances. From an aspect of creating entertainment that delivers a few thrills, this is fine. From the place of creating something that paralyzes with terror, this is like caging and doping a wild tiger. It's something to look at, but it has no Edge.
Fight fire with fire in Alien Abduction.
In the pre-social media era, Alien Abduction is a lineal descendant of Orson Wells' War of the Worlds, a legendary audio drama that also relied on minimum backstory for maximum terror. And Alien Abduction had a similar impact as War of the Worlds on the date of its original screening on the UPN Network. It’s also the progenitor of web-based ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) such as The Sun Vanished on Twitter, and many other on YouTube. If it sounds like I’m complaining and longing for the good old days, I am not. I am pointing out that the window in time that’s been closed off by tech has created many exciting possibilities on the web.
Giving me the creeps just reading this. I don't know if I can watch this.