TOTAL RECALL

Our cold, unknowable minds probe alien abduction yarn Fire In The Sky.

Will Salmon, Freelance Writer

UFOs are back in the cultural consciousness again. Perhaps because of the recent revelations by the US Navy and Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge going full “I want to believe” on us, it feels like they’re being talked about more than at any point since the ’90s, when the archetypal Grey alien face was a ubiquitous sight on posters and album covers.

Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by UFOlogy, while remaining entirely agnostic. It’s the indefinable mystery of the subject that appeals to me. If it’s ever definitively explained that, yes, they are spaceships from Zeta Reticula or whatever, I think I’ll actually be a little disappointed.

The film that best captures this feeling for me is Robert Lieberman’s Fire In The Sky. Released in 1993, just a few months before the initial wave of X-Files fever, it’s a meandering but moody attempt to dramatise an infamous UFO encounter: the alleged alien abduction of Travis Walton.

In 1975, Walton and six colleagues were out working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest when things took a turn for the sinister. While investigating some mysterious lights among the trees, Walton vanished. On his sudden return five days later, he claimed to have been abducted and experimented on by aliens. Lieberman’s film takes an unflashy approach to the story, dramatising the initial encounter. These scenes are very different to how the real Walton described them – and far more frightening. They present Walton’s abduction as a horrifyingly physical encounter. The creatures we see are a gnomish twist on the Greys, resembling beings from folklore more than science fiction aliens. The abduction itself is grotesque, with Walton webbed in a slimy cocoon up while fluids are forced down his throat and drills employed. It’s ethereal and atmospheric, but frighteningly tangible.

Fire In The Sky did okay on its release and was fairly well received, though has since fallen into semi-obscurity. But put it on late at night, and its rural oddness and sense of something utterly unknowable lurking in the trees become overwhelming.

Will is currently washing his Take Me To Your Dealer T-shirt.