Alien abduction is a fascinating subject and comes under the category of science fantasy, unless you have been abducted by them at one point. Entertainism lists the top 10 movies related to the theme of alien abduction.
Did You Know?
According to the International Center for Abduction Research, approximately 2 percent of Americans have been victims of alien abductions.
Many people over the past few decades have gone to the authorities and narrated their experiences of being abducted by aliens or extraterrestrials. This abduction boom started in the 1950s and stayed for a couple of decades. But like with every fashion, it slowly went out of fad. UFO sightings, however, still get reported.
This drop in abduction stories may be because of the unsavory things that happen in the alien spacecraft. Many ‘victims’ stated that they were sexually assaulted with tubes going in through every place available. Pretty unsettling and certainly not a conversation starter, although a good icebreaker.
When science got solid in the 1970s and 1980s, these incidents were looked at with increasing skepticism. The ‘victims’ were made fun of and were thought to have mental illnesses. True or not, one thing was sure: the mental agony of these ‘victims’ was real.
Movie makers capitalized on this. They showed the aliens as the real deal and prolonged the fantasy of abductions. Different kinds of aliens were projected in every movie. People became intrigued. When a person comes and says that there were weird instruments put in him, the listener may or may not have a colorful imagination to visualize the aliens or their contraptions. The movie makers did that, and people watched these movies with sheer delight. Finally, the people had an idea of what alien anal inspection tubes looked like.
We have listed some of the best mainstream movies and some B-grade ones too, because you never know that the aliens might just be as bad as those movies.
Progeny
Director: Brian Yuzna
Released: 1999
Duration: 98 min
Actors: Arnold Vosloo, Jillian McWhirter, Brad Dourif, Susanne Wright.
Box Office: No Data
Budget: $2.5 million
So, a couple is making love, and then a ray of light enters the dark room and penetrates the woman. They do not notice and go about their daily humdrum. Later, the woman finds out she is pregnant, but something is off. That something is her child, and it’s an alien.
Add to it a lot of drama and histrionics, eerie ultrasounds, and blood and gore, and you get the perfect alien flick. This movie is the Rosemary’s Baby of alien impregnation movies. Only that it fails to make you wonder or hold your attention like the Polanski classic.
The movie is a B-grade flick, but is watchable for the hilarity of the plot presented. They could have at least shown her being kidnapped by an alien spacecraft. Then they take her to the mother ship and try to make her a mother. But no, they made a ray of light, put a child in her, while she is making love to her boyfriend. The opportunists!
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County
Director: Dean Alioto
Released: 1998
Duration: 89 minutes
Actors: Benz Antoine, Kristian Ayre, Gillian Barber, Michael Buie, Emmanuelle Chriqui.
Box Office: TV Movie
Budget: TV movie
This movie gets straight to the point and hits the nail in the head, drives the point home and what not. The movie is made in a mockumentary format where three men from a farmhouse investigate a power outage. Among them is an enthusiastic film buff who records everything. They come across aliens who are supposedly zapping poor cows with their laser guns.
The three gutsy men flee back to the house and hole themselves in (brilliant idea!). The aliens obviously follow them there and all hell breaks loose. Since it is shot in a found footage style, there are some scenes that could make you jump. The director also capitalizes on poor VHS tapes and darkness.
The film’s climax is the most entertaining, as the family puts up the last stand by barricading themselves in a room and holding out against the extraterrestrials with the help of a door. The aliens have the technology to travel intergalactically, and the family locks their doors in their face (if they have one). Classic.
Fire in the Sky
Director: Robert Lieberman
Released: 1993
Duration: 109 minutes
Actors: D. B. Sweeney, Robert Patrick, Craig Sheffer, Peter Berg, James Garner.
Box Office: $20 million
Budget: $15 million
The movie is based on ‘true’ events as narrated by Travis Walton, a logger who was abducted by aliens. Travis worked as a logger in White Mountains in Arizona and goes missing as he and his friends are returning home after a day’s work. The two friends who witness the kidnapping inform the authorities that they saw a UFO in the sky. It shoots a beam of light towards Travis (not again!); he disappears in the craft, and so do the aliens.
The police officer does not eat the story and remains skeptical until Travis is located 5 days later and narrates that he was indeed abducted by aliens. Cross-examination takes place with a series of medical tests. Except for two small abnormalities, he seems perfectly fine and healthy. The police officer then brings in the help of a hypnotist, and we see a flashback where aliens put a lot of things in poor Travis.
So, the law authorities do not believe in UFOs, but believe in the pseudoscience of hypnosis. The movie has a good thrill quotient, and the scenes on the alien craft are well shown. To top it all, it comes from a ‘true’ story.
Mars Attacks!
Director: Tim Burton
Released: 1996
Duration: 106 minutes
Actors: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Box Office: $101 million
Budget: $100 million
A very tongue-in-the-cheek take on the theme of alien invasion, this movie is thoroughly entertaining. Boasting of a stellar cast that includes Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, and Michael J. Fox, the movie depicts aliens from Mars who have blockaded the earth and ‘surrounded the planet from all sides’.
The alien ambassador then makes a speech that horribly goes wrong because of a flying Dove, and the invasion begins. They destroy most of the signature monuments, and the destruction is well shown. There is also a scene where a professional boxer challenges an alien to a duel.
The movie has the signature look of Tim Burton. The story seems like the writers were high on weed and put in lighter moments in the serious tone that could have been there. But the topic of an invasion by aliens is ridiculous and hence, is handled very efficiently by Tim Burton. However stupid and far-fetched the situation is, some of the scenarios shown in the movie, namely the miscommunication and the governmental reaction to the invasion are pretty accurate.
Signs
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Released: 2002
Duration: 107 minutes
Actors: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin.
Box Office: $400 million
Budget: $72 million
An alien invasion shown through the eyes of a family living in a farmhouse in rural America, the movie presents a very different perspective to the prospect of an extraterrestrial invasion. The usual humdrum involved in invasion movies are flashy space crafts, CGI-heavy aliens, and lots of drama and action. This does not happen in Signs. The movie builds up fear by rarely showing any alien.
Most of the time, the protagonists have to deal with their own internal demons before dealing with any outside them. These demons are depicted in the form of the death of his wife that Father Merrill is still mourning, the sadness of not being qualified for professional baseball, and the disease of asthma of the youngest Morgan.
Some of the scenes are quite frightening and are usually shown through the expressions of the actors. In that way, even the minuscule Abigail Breslin does an impressive job. Although it’s not Shyamalan’s best work, it does invoke fear when needed.
Predator
Director: John McTiernan
Released: 1987
Duration: 107 minutes
Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall.
Box Office: $100 million
Budget: $15 million
One of the best action movies to come out till date, Predator does what it set out to do: deliver the action in the most entertaining way as possible. The movie shows a crack team of the United States special forces on a covert operation in the jungles of Central America. They finish their mission, but have to contend with another enemy, far more advanced and lethal.
The movie’s most basic theme is survival when almost everything is going against you. After every character dies except for Dutch played by Arnold very convincingly, the final duel is stuff of cinema classics.
There are very basic flaws in the logic of the movie. But these were cleared by the subsequent sequels, and all the loose ends were tied. Although not an abduction movie in the strict sense, it gives us the outlandish scenario that aliens are just very good sports for hunting, and we are the perfect game.
The Fourth Kind
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Released: 2009
Duration: 98 minutes
Actors: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Will Patton, Corey Johnson.
Box Office: $47 million
Budget: $10 million
A classic alien abduction movie that convinced almost everyone that it was a genuine dramatization of actual events, stirred up quite a bit of Internet storm. The movie claims to be narrating true incidents that happened in Nome, Alaska, where a string of disappearances is blamed on alien abductions.
The movie builds the tension very well and does an even good job to convince the audience by showing the dramatization and the supposed ‘real’ footage in split screen. The climax is very well executed, and chills are inevitable. The premise is pretty run-of-the-mill, and the concept is age-old, but it is the execution that puts it apart.
The movie’s only recognizable star is Milla Jovovich, whose on-screen look is very refreshing after the tight leather avatar in the Resident Evil scenes. She plays her part very well. All in all, the movie is entertaining although it builds up a sudden curiosity about the happenings shown. Then comes the disappointment that all of it was cleverly framed.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Director: Steven Spielberg
Released: 1977
Duration: 137 minutes
Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr.
Box Office: $303 million
Budget: $18 million
The movie narrates many freak incidences where pilots of a plane and a crew from a ship go missing. In a strange occurrence of a major power outage, Roy Neary of Indiana encounters a UFO very closely. After the incident, he begins to have hallucinations and very vivid nightmares. There is a mountain shown in all these dreams, but he ignores it as an unreal thing.
Two United Nations investigators are called in because of the increasing number of such incidences. The aliens are also communicating with sound with variable tone. The code is deciphered and leads to The Devils Tower mountain.
Roy recognizes the mountain from his dreams and travels there, where he and the rest of the people see the mother ship release all the abducted people from the past, healthy. Roy offers to join the aliens on their travels, and they accept. The movie was the first real attempt to show aliens in a serious tone.
Communion
Director: Philippe Mora
Released: 1989
Duration: 105 min
Actors: Christopher Walken, Lindsay Crouse, Frances Sternhagen.
Box Office: $10 million
Budget: No Data
The movie is based on the non-fiction novel by author Whitley Strieber. Strieber, in his novel, claimed to have made contact with non-human entities on multiple occasions. In the movie, Christopher Walken, who plays Strieber, goes to a cabin in upstate New York to spend a holiday with his friends and girlfriend. In the middle of the night, he is woken up and feels the presence of a non-human entity in the room.
The next day, he has no recollection of the incident whatsoever, even with his friends describing strange lights in the middle of the night. Strieber then has many vivid hallucinations and is taken to a psychiatrist by his girlfriend. Under hypnosis, he remembers.
The movie was panned by the critics and bombed at the box office, in contrast to the novel, which made it to the top of the New York Best Sellers List. The movie, however, is creepy and unsettling. And the fact that the novel itself is categorized as non-fiction, makes people wonder whether they are real incidents or just psycho-nonsense. Anyway, refrain from looking at dark corners after the movie.
Dark Skies
Director: Scott Stewart
Released: 2013
Duration: 97 minutes
Actors: Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, J. K. Simmons.
Box Office: $26 million
Budget: $3 million
The movie shows a simple family living in a suburban home. The man of the family Daniel is out of a job and stays at home. They start experiencing strange happenings around the house. Lacy, the mother, notices one night that Daniel gets out of bed to talk to a “gray figure”, and the youngest son Sam wanders out of the house in the middle of the night.
The conditions escalate, and things start getting worse. Sam gets strange bruises and marks all over his body, and the daughter Jesse has seizures and has to be taken to a hospital. Daniel installs video cameras all over the house for surveillance purposes, and when they go through the recording, they confirm that it is aliens that are haunting them.
The movie does not leave anything to wonder for the audience. Ten minutes on and you know it is about aliens. The logic is not convincing, even with the UFO expert thrown in. A movie to be watched just for the fun of it.
These were some of the best alien abduction movies. If you think there are some more commendable ones out there, please feel free to comment.
