Watch Alien Abduction

Alien Abduction is a 2014 science-fiction horror film directed by Matty Beckerman. The movie follows a family of four on a camping trip to Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The mother, father, and two children take a detour to investigate strange lights and sounds in the forest. They are quickly stalked by a mysterious bright light that abducts them.

Throughout the narrative, the movie switches between two perspectives. One is that of the home videos the father was making on his camcorder, which capture the family's interactions before and during the abduction. The other viewpoint is that of a documentary crew who is interviewing the family and piecing together their story after the fact. The mashup of found footage and traditional narrative techniques gives the film its unique structure.

Early in the movie, the story introduces autistic thirteen-year-old Riley (Riley Polanski) who has a fascination with aliens and catches mysterious lights on his video camera. The parents, Peter (Corey Eid) and Katie (Katherine Sigismund), dismiss Riley's discovery and go to sleep. The next morning, the family finds their campsite vandalized and continue their trip. However, strange things keep occurring, and they soon realize that they are not alone. They come across a car that appears to be abandoned but soon find the bodies of its occupants ripped out and taken.

As night falls, while driving in their RV, the family eyes a massive light hovering in the sky following them. Their car breaks down; the family is unable to start it, and the mysterious light surrounds them. Suddenly, they are taken on a UFO-like vessel where they are held captive, experimented on, and tortured. In between, they meet others who have been abducted and experimented on in similar phenomena. In their imprisonment, the family learns more about the intents of the extraterrestrial beings and their methods of communication.

Alien Abduction is successful in its creation of a frenzied atmosphere. The tension and fear that creep into the characters and the accompanying soundtrack are genuinely eerie, creating a sense of fragility and paranoia. The film also uses its sensitive touch on alien abduction themes, showing the psychological aspect of such an experience- the feeling of helplessness in the face of overwhelming odds and the ambiguity of the attackers' intent.

One trait that sets Alien Abduction from typical alien movies is its focus on the family's struggle and the indomitable human spirit of survival. The characters' relationships with each other, while not the most profound, are decently portrayed, giving added depth to their peril.

The elements involved in the abduction left audiences baffled as they kept digging deeper into the mystery, and it was intriguing to see how every character's choices added something significant to the plot. The film's grotesque visuals were chilling and realistic, adding to the terror element.

Still, the story falls short in some areas. It takes a lot of patience for the film's story to build up, to the point that entire portions of the movie end up coming across as tedious. The movie's pacing gets interrupted, where mundane scenes drag on and add very little logical reasoning to the plot. The acting is ordinary, and the family dynamic doesn't feel genuine enough to draw the emotional investment of viewers.

In conclusion, Alien Abduction chose to take a different approach to the typical UFO-extraterrestrial movies and attempted something that worked, but somewhat falters in some areas. The flick offers a sympathetic portrayal of abduction and is worth exploring with an open mind.

Alien Abduction is a 2014 horror movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes. It has received mostly poor reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 4.9 and a MetaScore of 46.