I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

HEY YOU MOVIE MAKING GUYS! HERE'S A TIP AND PLEASE KNOW THAT I WILL COME AFTER YOU WITH THE BILL IF I HAVE TO BUY NEW SPEAKERS: LOUD NOISES DO NOT EQUAL SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARES!!!






Alien Abduction aka The Morris Family Abduction (2014)

Yes my lovelies, we have a lame movie that not only is a found footage hand held piece of crap, but it's about an alien abduction. In fact, we get to see the end of the movie AT the beginning. AND if I was smart (and I'm not) I would have said 'good' and passed on this horrible, obvious, THEY'RE COMING TO GET US! type of alien bull spit and found something better. Somewhere. Somehow. But for now this ripoff of every found footage movie since the beginning of time can be found streaming on Netflix. BUT my children I MUST give this movie snaps for not pasting 'Based On Actual Events' on their movie poster, given that the phenomenon of strange lights being seen on Brown Mountain is real.


And to make this movie even more special for the audience, they make sure and let you know that the footage is taken by a boy with autism (played by Riley Polanski). What the hell does that have to do with anything? I'll tell you what though, he's a better cameraman than most idiots using hand held cameras in these types of movies. And all the actors real first names are used as their movie names. Isn't that clever?

I'm gonna be short with the movie part anyway 'cause there just ain't a whole lot going on in this movie that couldn't have been told in ten minutes or less. A family goes camping. They fight, complain, spend a night on Brown Mountain in North Carolina, and they all get abducted.

Since the movie is such a nothing movie, here's your small bit of education for today.


Brown Mountain DOES exist in North Carolina. In fact, lights that cannot be explained have been seen in the sky there for over a hundred years. Now the movie 'interviews' so-called experts as well as witnesses but here's the real thing:



The Brown Mountain Lights are a series of ghost lights reported near Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The lights can be seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway and from the Brown Mountain Overlook, Table Rock, and Wisemans View. There are other vantage points also that can be seen in North Carolina. And yes, they do want visitors - the best time to see them is reportedly September through early November.

Of course, the 'ghost lights' have their detractors. One interesting (and extremely stupid in my opinion) supposed 'reason' people are seeing these lights is called Nature Deficit Disorder. This disease flavor-of-the-month refers to a hypothesis by Richard Louv that human beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioral problems. 

So that would mean the boy taking the footage has autism because he's never outdoors although he's outdoors taking footage despite his autism being caused by his never being outdoors which he is in now with a camera despite his autism... ick, now I'm dizzy.

Louv claims that causes for the phenomenon include parental fears, restricted access to natural areas, and the lure of the screen. Recent research has drawn a further contrast between the declining number of National Park visits in the United States and increasing consumption of electronic media by children.

Oh really? So over a hundred years ago kids that were into their electronic games started seeing weird... oh, wait a minute - there wasn't even TELEVISION over a hundred years ago. So telling us we're stupid enough to see strange lights because we're imbeciles who were raised on electronic gadgets doesn't quite cut it.

Okay, movie. Family camps. Autistic boy with camera gets footage of three lights in the sky moving strangely. The next day, following the GPS instead of a good ole' map, the family gets lost (the movie suggests the GPS was guided by something other than a satellite, if you know what I mean and I think you do - sorry Joe Bob).

Next day family fights over running out of gas. Trying to get to town, they find a tunnel full of cars that must have the best batteries in the world because all of their lights are still on, in some the engines are still running, but everybody is gone. All the seatbelts have been ripped out of the cars.

And then the noise begins in earnest. You know what? Having soft dialogue and then SCREEEECHING a super-loud supposedly alien noise at top volume is not a substitution for scares. It's annoying, it woke up my husband in the other room, AND it's bad for my speakers. The father of the family is taken, the rest run for it and drive off without him.

Suddenly, it starts raining fake birds (don't worry - the guy who wrote the movie loved Hitchcock - he didn't hurt any birds). After it stops, so does their van and they have to travel on foot.

They remember that there was ONE mailbox on the road and they race toward it hoping to find someone with a phone because since they are in a horror movie (say it with me people) there is no signal on any of their phones. They can blame that on aliens if they want, but it's also a horror movie rule on my horror movie worksheet (patent pending) so you choose the reason.

The guy they run into at a small cabin, whom the movie portrays as one step above a caveman, tries to scare them off with a rifle, but when the aliens show up he lets them all inside. He's been waiting for his brother who went out and never came back. The movie screeches to a slow halt as nothing much was happening anyway, but now... nada. For a loooooong time. Instead of a picture, just imagine three people spending an hour in the basement. If you're still awake, keep reading...

The older brother is taken, the backwoods guy drives off presumably for help, and we get more non-action as the three remaining family members run through the dark woods for no good reason, for a long time. They find a barn and hide in it. For a long time. I'm now rooting for the screeching idiot aliens to show up quickly. They finally do. The mother gets bent backwards and off she goes. So does the backwoods guy, who had come back after finding his brother's empty truck. They scream as they're taken. Uh, no. Break someone like that, they're not going to be making ANY noise much less still be alive.

The sister and Riley spend an interminable time (again) running through dark woods. Let me say that again. INTERMINABLE. 


They make it back to the road the next day, meeting a cop who conveniently chose that exact moment to drive up. Unfortunately, he's about as handy as tits on a boar as he's immediately sucked up, then the sister, then the autistic boy is grabbed, then sucked up into... something. 

'Leaked footage' from the Air Force shows that his camera took blurry images of... stuff (Inside the spacecraft?), we hear screams, then the camera is flung from what appears to be an alien garbage shute and it makes its way back to Earth. 

It falls from outer space to Earth WITHOUT exploding into flame and spins and falls clear to the ground, again WITHOUT exploding into a billion pieces with exquisite precision onto Brown Mountain. AND it still works, as we see an Air Force dude in a hazmat suit pick it up and turn it on. 

Then we see credits, which is a cheat 'cause they have more. One year later (according to the movie) the father is found after walking out of the woods, naked and out of his mind. Roll the rest of the credits folks because I am done.