Come in Peace…on Handheld Camera

Nina Romain investigates the true intentions of aliens in found footage films – are they really coming in peace and should we waste precious time filming them?

When it comes to aliens arriving with bad intentions, we can all name a few,  whether it’s black and white classic episodes as in Twilight Zone’s chilling 1962 short To Serve Man which sees the supposedly well-meaning extra-terrestrial “Kanamits” landing on Earth, or big-budget features such as Independence Day (1996) and War of the Worlds (2005), all shot in traditional directorial style. But what if the aliens were filmed (failing to) come-in-peace with the nearest handheld camera?

Found footage alien invasion works well as a short, as in V/H/S 2 (2013) segment Slumber Party Alien Abduction which is a rare horror in that it’s occasionally shot from an animal perspective, as the camera is initially attached to the family dog. Director Jason Eisener shows the set-up of a group of teen boys dressing up as cardboard spray-painted “aliens” and pretending to capture the pet (foreshadowing the rest of the short), before we see from the dog’s POV the family’s teens and their friends left unattended over the weekend.

The pet sees the innocent chaos of teens’ water-balloon fights, spraying each other with silly string, getting their hands on some porn, and illicitly swigging the parental booze. But the adults-free horseplay is interrupted when a bright light in the sky and unexplained loud noises in the middle of the night indicate the aliens have crashlanded the party weekend. The siblings frantically try to stick together to escape the invasion and dodge the three-fingered invaders who storm their house and attempt to steal the dog. This pet-cam filmed alien invasion 13 minute short is funny, family-orientated, and genuinely creepy.

Feature Alien Abduction (2014), set in North Carolina and supposedly based on the real-life Brown Mountain Lights phenomenon, starts with a leisurely beginning of the Morris family camping. Filmed this time by a human (the family’s 13 year old son Riley), it mentions “Project Blue Book”, which it claims was set up in 1952 by the US Government whether UFOs existed, and if so how much of a threat they were to national security.

Riley’s footage starts with his family driving to a camping trip with some folksy “the sound of the mountains” blaring from the car stereo as they attempt to get away from it all for a few days. The cheerful weekend, all toasted marshmallows at the campfire and bluegrass music, starts to go awry as we see Riley’s enthusiastic shots of local wildlife turn to creepy close ups of half-eaten animals, before he uneasily films bright lights moving mysteriously in the night sky.

Things get stranger, when the GPS packs up and the family car comes to a tunnel blocked with abandoned vehicles. The Morrises unwisely wander in to investigate, but mysterious objects in the dark turn out to be shadowy figures in the distance, not to mention a hail of dead birds falling from the sky, as they frantically try to escape.

Abandoning the car, they meet a straight-talkin’ local (a plaid shirt wearing hillbilly who owns both a gun and a banjo, to the family’s alarm), who warns the Morrises that unexplained things have been happening locally in the woods. Riley’s footage gets an eerie blueish glow and strange glitches (or as an expert puts it, “electro-magnetic interference”) when aliens are near. They aren’t seen clearly until the final attack on the unfortunate Riley and his remaining sibling. Only Riley’s camera footage is found later afterwards, and we realise the elder son’s self-sacrifice to try to save his family failed to succeed. Alien Abduction’s excellent acting and unexpected humour make this an extremely good alien found footage.

Skinwalkers (2014) is another found footage alien feature which is also both family-orientated and surprisingly moving. A local farmer, living in the middle of a deserted plain in Utah tells the film crew that his young son Cody disappeared after a bright light in the sky suddenly appeared in broad daylight. The crew move to his farm to investigate the disappearance on film with the help of CCTV. There’s a hint that they are not alone in the plains, where a shadow is seen on a dark window early on, and then bright lights are captured on the outside cameras, before the family dog meets a gruesome end.

Like Alien Abduction’s Blue Book Project, the Government have also been trying to get to the heart of the matter, as the film crew find out when they see a historic handheld short of the official attempts to hush it up, adding to the mystery. It’s a more convoluted plot, but shares the no-nonsense local who warns the crew to get “the f*ck outta here” before beating a hasty retreat. The family sadness of Cody’s disappearance and his father trying to find him is intelligently underplayed but always there.  Again, the crew’s footage is found afterwards, but there is no trace of them.

So if there’s any bright lights in the sky next time you’re in the middle of nowhere with your handheld camera, it may be a good time to remember the true intentions of Rod Serling’s Kanamits…and stop filming and start running.