Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Leofwine_draca ALIEN ABDUCTION: THE MCPHERSON TAPE is an early entry in the found footage genre, beating THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to the cinemas by over a year and THE LAST BROADCAST by nine months, although of course it's relatively new compared to Ruggero Deodato's granddaddy of the genre, the Italian nasty CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. So how does it hold up for modern audiences? Reasonably well, I thought. The film's pacing is spot on, with inexplicable events gradually building towards all-out terror at the climax, and the single location scenario put to good use throughout. It has dated in places, though; the aliens and their spaceship are too explicitly shown, looking like X-FILES rejects rather than an actual menace, and keeping them off the screen would have made for a more realistic production.The worst thing about this is the calibre of the acting: too many of the performances are shrill and histrionic, with a good half hour of the footage consisting of people shrieking at each other. I can't imagine many viewers would want to sit through that. Elsewhere, though, it's genuinely unsettling, particularly with its handling of unexplained disappearances. The faux interviews that pop up throughout the movie serve to build on the atmosphere but occasionally interrupt the pace. Oddly, the film this most reminded me of was that low-budget sci-fi stinker of the 1970s, THE DAY TIME ENDED.

todaywiththeCJB Compared to the original, the story is much more fleshed out, much scarier and the acting is much better. Throughout the beginning of the film, the acting seems quite fake, but near the end, the acting is brilliant and seems very real. The point of the movie is to seem realistic and acting is a gigantic point of that. But, it does only very well near the end. Also, the cuts in the film are quite annoying but also funny because you know they're fake. This does quite ruin the realism though, but it was funny to see the director - Dean Alioto in one of the cuts saying "No one could have directed this except me". I kind of think another remake would be pretty amazing with better effects and actors (maybe the same actors, just years on when they've gotten better!)

zetes A found footage alien abduction movie that originally aired on the UPN network in January of 1998. Much like the contemporaneous Blair Witch Project, many were convinced it was real. It's very clearly not. The acting is very amateurish. The film is broken up with interviews from experts. One of them, a film director, claims that it has to be real because it has no real plot. The fact is, not only does the film have a very basic horror movie plot, it also has about half a dozen subplots, like mom's alcoholism (the woman carries a wine glass even while running from aliens) or sister's dating a black man. No matter, though. For what it is, it's actually very well done. It's quite frightening. I'm surprised it didn't lead to bigger things for the director. I suspect, given which network it aired on, that almost no one saw it at the time. This is actually the second version of the film. The first was made nine years earlier. Both versions can be found on Youtube.

patbutcher187 This is without doubt the worst film I have ever seen, I cannot believe so many people have rated it so highly and said it was scary... It is gash! The "acting" was beyond belief, I have seen better acting from kids wearing rubber helmets doing drama at special school.By the time the film was over I genuinely wanted to inflict an eye injury to myself using a spoon to ensure I would never see this horrendous film again.The fact it tries to make out it is a true story makes it even worse, it's not bad enough that it was made and released onto the world like an unwanted STD but then the writer tries to insult our intelligence by claiming it is genuine. I hope he falls onto a spike.