Wait: A movie based on "true" alien abductions as revealed through induced hypnosis is crappy & fake? Who would have thought?

I'll stick with a better alien encounter movie. Close Encounters of THE THIRD KIND. Classic, awesome, and still the best!

That's too bad. They should have just dramatized it with the standard 'based on a real events' line.

I'm not sure why people get so upset about the "truth" claims in horror movies. Yes, it's exploitative, but we go to scary movies to have our fears exploited. The claims of truth are supposed to make it scarier. Of course, you could get angry because gullible people are being exploited, but come on... Why don't you complain about people being afraid to swim after seeing Jaws? Or kids afraid of dolls after seeing Poltergeist or the Talking Tina episode of The Twilight Zone? Didn't those exploit the gullibility of people who somehow need to believe that they're the focus of some malevolent entity or creature?

Yes, it is the same. Some people had very real reactions after seeing both movies. Refusing to swim, not wanting clown dolls. The movies affected the way people perceived the real world. And you can argue against it all you want, but people do get bitten by sharks. Countless people have claimed to see dolls (including the famous Robert the Doll) actually move on their own. And people (who haven't even been hypnotized) have claimed to have violent encounter with evil elves/aliens or whatever they are, that seem to have a fondness for people out on lonely roads, woods, or campgrounds. Your outrage can't change the minds of people who have experienced something unusual or prevent people from believing someone else's story.

Well that grade is disapointing.  Even though I don't believe in ET, the fact that the film was shot in the vein of being "true" made the trailer that much more freaky to me.  I was hoping it would be good.  I wouldn't mind seeing a great alien abduction film.  While I love Close Encounters, the best abduction film in my mind is Fire in the Sky which was also based on "true" events.  I never get tired of watching that.  The whole abduction scene always creeped me out.

ddiaz28, very true, both the Third kind and Fire in the Sky are the best ''abduction'' movie.

Fire in the Sky does stay closer to the facts and not too much on fantasy which makes it even more scarier that this story is very most likelly true.

I was hoping for this movie to do well, probably still check it out anyway, the gf owes me a movie anyways.

Larry King recommends it im in!

LittleNell, my problem with this particular type of story and the parallels you draw come down to plausibility and evidence.  Sharks are real. That is not a matter of interpretation or possibilities.  You can go in the ocean or to an aquarium and see actual real sharks.  You can make all the claims you want about alien abduction and/or the probabilities of life on other planets, but no one has been able to produce an actual, physical ET.  When several people in Alaska claim to have seen an owl outside their window, it's more plausible to me that they actually saw an owl!  They're in frickin' Alaska.  If a patient seeing a psychiatrist reveals that someone snuck into her room in the middle of the night and performed an examination on her, it's much more plausible to me that she was molested or raped than that an alien abducted her.

For the record, I do believe there is intelligent life out there.  Some may even be capable of interstellar travel.  I just tend to doubt that they have come millions of miles to secretly abduct people from rural America to anally probe them, then dump them back in their beds.  If you look at how humans study the physiology of animals, we capture them, kill them, and dissect them.  We don't probe them, then put them back in their lairs.  Sometimes we'll study them in their habitats if we are observing behaviors, but then we try to do whatever we can to minimize contact so as not to affect their behavior with our presence.

"I just tend to doubt that they have come millions of miles to secretly abduct people from rural America to anally probe them, then dump them back in their beds. "

.........Maybe those are the folks this film was made for.

fft5305, yes, sharks are real, but the level of fear created by Jaws was unrealistic. Dolls are real, but the fear of them comes from a superstitious idea that they're somehow sentient. You can argue that ghosts aren't real - because we haven't captured one of them either, And, you can argue that abduction experiences aren't real, because extraterrestrials just wouldn't do that, even though abduction stories go way back before we considered the possibility of ET. Then, we assumed the abductors were terrestrial, but were ancestor ghosts, gods, elves, trolls, the fay, angels, or whatever.

I'm not arguing the reality of any of it. Believe what you want. The point is, that they put the "this is real" line on the movie because they're trying to scare you... because it's entertainment. It's kind of laughable to be outraged by the claim, I mean, do you call magicians frauds because they palm the coins? No, you just enjoy being entertained. Were you outraged the first time you heard an urban legend at a sleepover? No, you just enjoyed being scared by a "true" story, because it was fun. Because we like to be scared, it serves some purpose for us.

And some people will believe they were abducted. And some people will believe dolls move. And some people will believe in ghosts. And some peole will be afraid to go deeper than their knees in the ocean off Myrtle Beach. Don't waste your time being outraged. Just enjoy the wonderful mystery of it all.

Oh, I'm not outraged.  I don't mean to give that impression.  Also, I don't know of any magicians who claim true, authentic magical abilities.  That's why many of them don't call themselves magicians.  They call themselves illusionists.  Because they make no pretense of the fact that they are putting on a show.  I've also never heard any stories claiming to be true about dolls moving or becoming sentient.  Now ghosts are another matter.  There are tons of stories about ghosts claiming to be true.  Much like with aliens, I don't disbelieve, but I think there are more plausible accounts of supernatural or unexplained activities related to spirits than there are about alien abduction.  In both cases, ghosts and aliens, I fully admit I may be completely wrong about it and some of these accounts may in fact be true.  I just think (as I stated above) that the vast majority of times, there is a more reasonable and believable explanation.  I don't begrudge anyone their belief to the contrary, though.