The scariest thing is the internet's response

I just watched the video on the Lost Media site and I was really impressed! I thought it was a great, creepy, realistic little found-footage movie, one of the best straight-to-video flicks I have seen. However...

The legend that has grown up around the film on the internet is nothing short of absurd. Aside from the standard suspension of disbelief expected in any found-footage horror, this film does not pretend to be anything other than fiction. There is no way this is genuine footage of an alien visitation. Let's consider:

SPOILERS AHEAD!



* The "family" are clearly actors (good improvisational actors, but definitely of the dramatic school), and bear little or no resemblance to one another (because they are not related).

* At least two of these actors have gone on to appear in other films and TV shows AFTER making this film (have a look at their IMDB pages); pretty impressive for people who, if we are to believe the credulous, are either dead or have been living on Uranus since 1983.

* The guy behind the camera (Dean Alioto, who is incidentally the real writer and director of the film, who has also verifiably "survived" and gone on to work on other things) deliberately AVOIDS giving us any real close-up shots of the aliens, even when the guys kill one and bring its dead body inside where the camera operator could easily get all the crystal clear up close-up shots he could ever want of the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century. Even if he was too traumatised to think in those terms, you'd think he'd at least be interested in the "people" attacking the family from a survival point of view. But nope, lots of shots of the family running around and shouting, few shots of the aliens. Why? Because...

* The "aliens" are kids in low-budget rubber masks and the director doesn't want to damage audience credibility by making it too obvious. You can clearly see that there is no articulation or life to them, and in a few scenes it seems you can actually see under the opening at the neck. In some shots, parts of the loose-fitting masks even seem to fold or collapse inward slightly, just the rubber Homer Simpson mask I had when I was a kid. This is especially noticeable when the guy is carrying the dead alien. I did see a YouTube video where some guy tried to turn it around, saying that someone at a UFO convention told him he's seen dead aliens before and it's typical of their eyes to go convex, which is like saying I've seen lots of Bigfoot videos and all Bigfeet are born with a zipper up their back.

* The director has repeatedly stated the movie is fictional. If he was in on the cover-up, why would he release the footage in the first place?

* There is no record of a missing McPherson (or Van Heese) family. No one remembers a McPherson family that mysteriously disappeared. There IS no missing McPherson family.

The predictable go-to response to these points will inevitably be something along the lines of "AHA! The film might be fake, but that doesn't mean it's not a recreation of real events put forth by the government using Hollywood as a mouthpiece, in order to try to gauge the level of hysteria and/or gradually desensitise the public to the idea of aliens, so there's less panic when the truth finally does come out!"

Firstly, if this release was an experimental move by a shadowy government agency, why give the movie such a tiny release? As anyone who has carried out any kind of semi-reliable study will tell you: the bigger the sample size (in this case, audience), the more useful the results. If there really was government behind this, and the government wanted people to see it, then it would NOT have disappeared into direct-to-video obscurity. Moreover, something like this would be better "hidden" in plain sight, like a big mainstream theatrical film (no one thinks Blair Witch is real, do they?), as opposed to gaining the hearsay and legend that surrounds mythical, hard-to-find films.

Secondly, if they were trying to desensitise people, why would they portray the aliens as threatening and sinister? Why not cute and friendly E.T.s? The content of the film is a poor match for the claimed purpose.

Finally, this was NOT Hollywood! This was not made by some huge corporation with billions of dollars and FBI/CIA/Illuminati/whatever connections. This was one young man with a few thousand dollars saved up and a dream to make his own movies. Once you remove the likelihood of the footage itself being real - and without any actual, hard evidence to say it's a propaganda film - all that remains of the argument is "IT MUST BE A CONSPIRACY SOMEHOW COS IT'S ABOUT ALIENS!" But here's the thing:

I first found out about this movie because I had recently read about the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter and it had inspired me to start writing my own found-footage alien movie. When, doing research, I discovered this film and realised it had already been done better than I could ever hope to achieve, I gave up on the idea... BUT it also scared me that so many people were crying conspiracy and claiming the movie to be real.

Put yourself in my shoes for a second, and imagine that Alioto had never made this movie or its remake, and it was ME that did the first realistic found-footage alien abduction movie (unlikely, but bear with me). I came upon the idea without any outside interference, and yet if I had made the movie, I would be the one being accused of filming real aliens and covering it up; I would have become a victim of the conspiracy patrol. If I can come up with the idea of a Blair Witch style movie about a family under siege from aliens without a shadowy government agent telling me to do so, then I'm pretty sure Alioto can - anyone can! The is absolutely zero reason to think otherwise. It's just another case of "I Want to Believe!"

The real problem with people who jump to attribute every stupid thing to aliens or government conspiracies is the fact that they completely obscure the issue. I believe it's not entirely outwith the realm of possibility that, if we are being visited (a very big "if" in my book, but possible) there might be ONE OR TWO real photographs or films or pieces of evidence, but we'll probably never find them amongst all the wishful thinking and hoaxing and exaggeration and credulousness and hysteria that is out there in the imbalanced corners of the internet.


TL;DR - The movie is fake, nor is it a direct re-enactment of a specific event, and alien believers are harming the credibility of their own cause by believing in the reality of fictional films.