IMDb metadata is runtime of 1 hour and 20 minutes (it seemed longer, much longer), rated a heady 2.4 by 294 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy fy
Verdict: There is no UFO and little else.
The opening credits are juxtaposed with grainy photographs of ostensible UFOs from the 1940s and 1950s. Then in a prologue we see a journalist with big hair and flared trousers in a double-knit suit interviewing Georgians about UFO sightings and abductions. The interviewees look rural and sound southern. This seemed a reasonable start.
Then the unreasonable set in.
A graduate student, wearing a three-piece suit and necktie with his own office and desk telephone at the University of Gainsville (Florida) makes a telephone call during a thunderstorm and over a crossed wire hears a conversation between a general and someone else about strange goings on.
During this call he has flashbacks to his own childhood in a similar storm, though the exposition is so lame it took ages for the fraternity brothers to realise this was a flashback and not a parallel cut-away. Later these flashbacks might be relevant, but at the time they seemed bad editing.
What to do? He consults his supervisor (bearing a frightening resemblance to what Justin Beiber will become) who wisely tells him to forget it. In the great tradition of student rebellion Three Piece disregards this sage advice, and recruits Mystic to help him get to the bottom of this mystery. Who better than a mystic to deal with a mystery? Mystery? What mystery? The phone call.
He goes to see General, there is only one in all of Florida, who wears an Army-Navy store uniform and who chides him for the liberal ideas of students (in Florida?), and then denies everything. Well he would, wouldn’t he. During this conversation Three Piece represents himself, a lowly grad student, as negotiating for the university. Sure. Even so the conversation is reasonably well written but so slowly executed the suspicion grows that they actors had to be word perfect because their was no dime for a re-take.
It seems there is a long history of electric power disruptions in the area. That the Buford Plant generating station has had some strange accidents. And that the mystic hears voices in the air, and not from a BlueTooth headset.
Three Piece and Mystic trace the voices to the lake. ‘The lake! Gulp. The lake? Yes, the lake.’ This dialogue went on for five-minutes. What they need is proof. Sure, but proof of what? That Three Piece is nuts and Mystic has an ear pod stuck in her lobe?
As darkness falls, they wait. We wait with them. We all continue waiting. That is followed by more waiting.
Then Three Piece also starts hearing voices in the air. He puts on a grey wig like Christopher Lloyd in ‘Back to the Future’ and walks into the lake as the voices tell him he has been chosen, only the fourth to be so honoured in a thousand years. By his sacrifice the world is saved (from the Trumpettes for a time?). We wondered if Virginia Woolf had been so honoured.
The end.
Get it? Get it! No, neither did we. What were we saved from? A sequel?
If the phone call was hot why didn’t the general do something like lock up Three Piece. Like rip his office apart. Like send thugs to warn him off. Like put on reflective dark glasses. Like tell the aliens to look out. Like try to kill Mystic. Come on. This is standard B-movie fare.
Did Florida grad students in 1974 wear three-piece suits? Did scientists team up with mystics quite that readily? Did someone really write that dialogue?
We never see a UFO, nor is there any reason to think that there is one. The voices, well there are other explanations. See a textbook on psychoses for a list.
There are lots of swirling lights to imitate Space Odyssey (1968). Some of the sound track works.
None of it takes us ‘To The Edge of Tomorrow’ per the lobby card. Nor do we broach ‘UFO’s…the truth about them might just blow your mind for the last time.’ Nope. Unblown.
One of the critics linked to the IMDb entry suggests it be re-titled to ‘Target Extreme Boredom’ because it succeeded at that. Amen, chorused the slumbering fraternity brothers.
Then there are the effects, like the boom microphone hanging overhead.
The post-production editing and (dis)continuity render most of it incomprehensible without a script to follow. Hmm. Maybe that would not help.
None of the cast or crew has other listing on the IMDb. Ergo they learned from this experience to go into paediatrics or something.
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