After the explosive and over-the-top nature of Slither, we’re bringing it down a few notches today with a lower-key film, Alien Abduction. Aside from its thrilling and unique title, what got me interested in Alien Abduction is that it’s a found footage movie, and even though I love that subgenre I haven’t watched one of those in a long time making this a bit of a return to form. The story of Alien Abduction is pretty simple, a real shocker for a found footage movie, and it concerns a family on vacation in the hills of North Carolina who happen to come upon a strange phenomenon that may or may not be related to Alien Abductions. But I mean, come on, it’s a movie, it’s gotta be aliens.

With every found footage movie we also need the explanation for why someone would still be filming even after horrors and scares pop out, and Alien Abduction is no exception! Here in Alien Abduction the camera operator is Riley, an 11-year-old Autistic boy whose object of fixation is his camera…which is a pretty good excuse! Riley is a fairly realistic portrayal of a functional autistic child, and seeing the movie from his perspective does add a lot to the experience. It’s unusual to compliment the cinematography of a found footage movie, but the choice to have a child be filming means that every shot is angled slightly upwards, which makes everything seem a bit more threatening. The standard shaky cam and heavy jump cuts are here, and they do detract from the experience, but there’s an idea in there that I really enjoy.

While there is a lot I liked about Alien Abduction, it also definitely had a ton of limitations, the most glaring being the aliens themselves. I don’t mind the concept of going with the old-fashioned Grays, you know, the naked ones with pale skin and huge heads, but they just don’t look that good here, they look like guys wearing alien costumes. The shaky cam and hard cuts help hide it, but it took me out of the movie a bit to see that, especially when some of the other effects were pretty decent. While this definitely isn’t a movie for everyone, if you don’t mind a lower budget and think that found footage films are interesting, this may be worth a watch. I’ve certainly seen worse movies, and as this is the director’s first feature, I think we can cut a little slack. Available on Tubi.