by Nathaniel R
There's a holiday for everything. Did you know that today, March 20th, is "Extra-Terrestrial Abduction Day"? The more you know. Whoosh. (You're picturing a shooting star which is appropriate in this sci-fi context.) Whenever we think of this topic (thankfully not often) the movie Fire in the Sky (1993) comes to mind. It contains the single most terrifying alien abduction scene ever put to film...
TAKE ONE: MOST TERRIFYING
The entire alien abduction sequence is brutally disorienting, the terror maximized by director Robert Lieberman. The lead actor, D.B. Sweeney, the man being snatched and experimented on screams his head off with the very best of cinema's scream queens, only in, y'know, a manly way. The only way the infamous scene from this cult classic could be more invasive is if the aliens hadn't let the movie's star wear a modesty pouch. The best thing about the scene is that's is so, well, alien. Everything feels off and inhuman, including the cleanliness of the experiment (or lack thereof).
Surprisingly despite a topic that's inspires so much folklore and conspiracy theories and the like, there aren't actually all that many alien abduction movies. That we know of at least, but we have two favourites. With the most terrifying covered, we move on to The Best and The Funniest.
TAKE TWO: BEST OF ALL TIME
Director Jonathan Glazer has an impressive track record but unfortunately he's the furthest thing from prolific. Bursting onto the scene with the excellent crime drama Sexy Beast (2000), he outdid himself with the masterful psychosexual drama Birth (2004) starring Nicole Kidman in one of her greatest performances. The film was misunderstood in its time but quickly recovered and now regarded as a great film by quite a few cinephlies and critics. But his masterpiece (to date), if you ask us, is the surreal alien horror drama Under the Skin wherein Scarlett Johansson appears as "The Female" who lures unsuspecting men to their death as they sink into a black abyss of no return. It's unclear exactly what she's doing to the men but it aint good! Glazer's visual talents and Johansson's performance are utterly mesmerizing throughout. It won our gold medal here at TFE as the best film of 2014 and we stand by that decision five years later. It's one of the great films of the decade. More on that one here.
TAKE THREE: THE FUNNIEST
We don't talk about Mars Attacks! (1996) enough. While it's not quite Tim Burton's funniest movie (that honor will surely always belong to Pee Wee's Big Adventure), it comes surprisingly close. Despite its obvious riffing on 1950s sci-fi horror tropes and visual ideas, it's among Burton's most impressive feats of imagination. Overall we'd call it his single most underrated film.
It's hard to pick a favourite scene or subplot but, laser gun to our heads, we'd go with Sarah Jessica Parker's hilarious performances as a talk show host who is abducted by aliens. Her subplot has multiple visual surprises and punchlines including the realization that she and her beloved chihuahua have both been experimented on by the aliens. Even funnier is her eventual adjustment to life as a floating head and then as a half-dog woman.
So dear reader, moving away from these three pictures (or not, your choice in the comments), which movie alien would you most want to be abducted by?