Alien Thanksgiving
The opening of "Alien Abduction: The McPherson Tape" gives us this spiel about a 16 year old teenager recording his families thanksgiving but ending up recording much more than he expected as their thanksgiving for all sense and purpose was wrecked by aliens. Yes this is one of those movies which wants us to believe that what we are watching is found footage of an alien abduction. But here is the movies first of many mistakes, in the role of father is Aaron Pearl, maybe not the best known of actors but one who is recognizable and so completely wrecks the whole found footage malarkey. But in truth you would have to be seriously gullible in the first place to believe the spiel about it being found footage as whilst this was made before the "Blair Witch Project" the concept is over used.
Anyway as to what happens, well the family are getting together for thanksgiving, there is tension between them anyway and then a huge flash of flight from outside and then the power goes out. Creepy right? No not at all and is just unbelievably mundane with no atmosphere at all despite there being no lights, strange noises and I really don't care. Of course eventually we have the alien encounters with aliens who look like they have come from "Encounters" and of course people die, cows get mutilated and everyone goes missing or else it wouldn't be a found footage movie.
The thing is that it is utterly terrible and fails to convince for a single second that it is found footage. Even when you try to take into account that it is meant to be amateurish due to it purporting to be found footage it is impossible to be entertained by. And what it suffers from is actors who for the most fail to act as normal people.
What this all boils down to is that "Alien Abduction: The McPherson Tape" is a fail for me as it never once comes across as either believable or generates the scares it intended to.
