Director: Robert Lieberman
Writer: Tracy Tormé
Year: 1993

Why did I even watch Fire in the Sky? I think it was due to some folks at Giant Bomb offhandedly referencing how much it scared them when they were children. It had something to do with aliens. Abduction movies aren’t necessarily my forte, but I went ahead and watched it.

It’s such a droll film. Simply put, the group of protagonists never really exist as three-dimensional characters. We know they’re all loggers that work together. Maybe they’re friends. Or maybe they’re just co-workers. At least one of them has a family and another wants to be in a relationship. Beyond that, though, they’re nobodies to the viewer.

When one guy gets abducted by aliens, I certainly didn’t care. Nor did it bother me when the townsfolk all turned against this group of average dudes. After all, when someone claims their friend was “abducted by aliens” you’d think they’re lying. The goal of Fire in the Sky intends to make viewers question whether or not they are murders or if they truly witnessed an abduction. But again, none of it intrigued me. The whole film moved along much too slowly.

The best – and likely most memorable – moment in the film is when we see a glimpse of our missing man in the alien spacecraft. These scenes prove incredibly haunting. They’re practically on the same level as an iconic scene depicted in A Clockwork Orange. Whoever devised these scenes deserves a lot of credit. Without them, absolutely nobody would remember Fire in the Sky.