Aliens, Extraterrestrials, Space Brothers

Besides being a well-researched book on extraterrestrial visitations and the infamous the Roswell Incident (UFO ran a red light, crashed, and we put the alien driver in jail and denied bail) and beyond, it’s the title that’s pretty dang clever: Fifty Shades of Greys. Man, that’s funny because greys are what we call aliens, probably because they look so depressed all the time.

Written by Raymond Szymanski, a retired Air Force Engineer, the 2016 book claims that the UFOs and aliens from the outrageous 1947 Roswell Incident were brought to the Wright – Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to be examined and kept in obscure covered passageways. That’s a pretty bold proclamation. An Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, home of Orville Wright, the guy who invented UFOs? Mr. Szymanski — you just hit pay dirt.

Another coincidence, then, that we’re being invaded with movies and documentaries of our depressed space brothers. Here are a few just released sci-fi movies and UFO documentaries to give you a few more shades of greys…

ALIENS: ZONE OF SILENCE (available now)
“After her brother vanishes from the Mexican desert, a young woman sets out to uncover the truth about his disappearance. When she discovers an extraterrestrial presence, she must risk her life to expose the desert’s otherworldly secret.”

An almost note-for-note rip-off of The Phoenix Incident (2015), The Phoenix Tapes ’97 (2016) and Phoenix Forgotten (2017). Despite the plagiarism, the fact this is YET ANOTHER found footage flick should make you wanna better spend your time elsewhere, like abducting beers.

ALIEN CONTACT: OUTER SPACE (available now)
Many people think of Space as a quiet and desolate vacuum of emptiness, but new evidence reveals that space is rife with activity beyond our comprehension. Just as we sent Voyager and Pioneer probes beyond our solar system, aliens have probes of their own that may have arrived as early as the 1600’s. While Tesla was the first to successfully communicate with neighboring worlds using radio waves, we have received recent signals from intelligent sources. In 1989, Russian Space Probe Phobos 2 photographed a UFO on the surface of Mars just prior to losing contact. Scientists have determined that the craft was real and of a thin elliptical shape over 20 miles in length. We are not alone in outer space and while the aliens may be initiating contact, they could also be here already.”

Seems to me if aliens wanted to contact us they would just send us an IM on Spacebook™ or something. Or maybe its because they haven’t found intelligent life here on Earth worth talking to. That’s probably it.

E.T. CONTACT: THEY ARE HERE (available now)
“E.T. Contact: They Are Here documents the jaw-dropping stories of individuals from around the world who share similar accounts of extraterrestrial and otherworldly encounters. Through a series of groundbreaking on-camera experiments on human DNA, and interviews with leading scientists, viewers will find themselves pondering the nature of their own reality or yet the true origin of the human species. E.T. Contact may ultimately show that the traditionally unexplained is, in fact, far more attributable to science than fiction.”

The trailer for this one is pretty funny as it features straight-faced academics supporting the belief of extraterrestrials’ existence and, by extension, their frequent visitations to learn how our back doors work. Take heed, space brother; I just ate a Taco Bell™ Fiery Doritos Locos Taco Supreme™.

ALIEN CONVERGENCE (available now)
“When flying reptilian aliens begin to take over the world, the remaining survivors must band together and fight back with newly developed fighter jets.”

Aliens can fly? Well dang — that makes ’em even cooler than first thought. Aside from complexion, wondering, though, how this differs from Flying Monkeys (2013)?

Skeptical About Ghosts

Bryan Beckett is an attorney whose aunt just died and left him a four-story Victorian house loaded with lots of eBay™-able furnishings. The house also comes with a ghost. Therein lies the problem — Beckett is pragmatic to a fault, refusing to believe in the Loch Ness monster, the Roswell Incident, or spooks and/or spirits. He doesn’t even go to church because he thinks all that God stuff is just plain silly. Ironic how he keeps yelling out “Jesus Christ!” whenever the ghost comes around.

Beckett moves into the house and hears audible whispers and door scratchings (probably a giant talking rat). He even sees reflections of a ghost woman in mirrors and crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs. These are goon out moments. He later learns the house was willed to a scientific institute that specializes in investigation of the paranormal.

Having his inheritance yanked from underneath his disbeliefs, Beckett goes to the institute and discovers his aunt was a customer after hearing voices and scratchings herself. But the lab director deals in science fact, not fiction, and easily dismisses the experiences in what Beckett now believes to be a haunted house. And hey, factor in all the medication he’s been taking for chronic insomnia (and delicious wine left in the cellar), and you have a plausible explanation for the spookings. If only drugs and booze were that simple.

As the paranormal events escalate, Beckett slowly discovers he’s been blocking something so horrifying, he’d pee his pants right now if it wouldn’t be embarrassing in front of the supernaturally pre-disposed chick from the institute. She moves in for a night to see if the place is actually haunted, or if Beckett’s dipstick isn’t quite touching the oil.  Strong dialogue propels the mystery even further, with the vomit-inducing truth coming to his mind’s surface.

An above average ghost story, The Skeptic (2009), even with its lackluster ending (it needed less Casper/1995, and more Poltergeist/1982), has great reaction shots and enough scare moments to make that which was prone to puckering even more so.