Brendan Jesus
Nearly every documentary about aliens, Ufology, or ‘D’isclosure is the same. Start with a bold or “hard-hitting” statement from someone in the field who has some semblance of clout and then pad out an hour and 20 minutes with the same talking heads we see time after time. Maybe throw in a few dramatic recreations, or show TicTac video a handful of times. Call it a day and cash in those VOD checks. As much as I enjoyed aspects of James Fox’s The Program, that’s all it was. (Let’s not discuss the fact that he possibly ruined his credibility with the whole Jason Sands thing, but that’s a conversation for another time.) This brings us to Dean Alioto’s The Alien Perspective.
Writer/director Dean Alioto is more horror-adjacent than one would initially expect. His directorial feature debut was one of the found footage films that predated The Blair Witch Project and even The Last Broadcast. The McPherson Tape is an exciting alien-related found footage film that walked so Blair Witch could float. Cut to three and a half decades later, Alioto decides to set a new precedent (again) for the future of Ufology with The Alien Perspective.
Unlike what I discussed at the beginning, The Alien Perspective doesn’t set out to tell you aliens are real. It brings questions to the foreground that we often don’t think about or dare to question. I’ll be frank and say that some of the ideas brought up in Part 1, I think, are ridiculous in concept, but the experts Alioto brings on to discuss them do so in a fascinating way. Even the ideas that I’m skeptical about were still exciting to listen to.
The Alien Perspective bookends itself with something that seemed hokey at first. Deep Prasad (Quantum Researcher and CEO of ReactiveQ) meets up with Dr. Kevin Knuth at, what seems like, a seedy highway rest stop. Dr. Knuth clutches a shoebox-looking object tightly as he reveals its origins; the object in this box is from a UFO crash site that took place in New Mexico in 1947…weeks after Roswell. What comes of this box by the end of Part 1? Well, you just have to watch to find out. All I will say is I was NOT expecting Prasad’s findings.
This film features a ton of credible names from Ufology, like frequent Coast to Coast with Art Bell guest Dr. Michio Kaku, Travis Walton (maybe not the most credible), Dave Foley, Elisa Quintana, David Chalmers, Leslie Kean, James Penniston, Nick Pope, and many others. Thankfully, there is one name you’ll notice I didn’t mention *cough* Lue Elizondo *cough*. That right there is an extra half-star for my Letterboxd review.
Episode 1 is subtitled, “Where did they come from?” and is the perfect jumping-off point. One of the first things Michio Kaku brings up is putting us in the shoes of NHI. “What if you were an advanced civilization meeting earthlings for the first time?” It’s a question no one has stopped to ask, and it’s explored quite interestingly.
Chapter 1, subtitled, “Finding Them” focuses on NASA’s TESS Search For Life Program (Transitory Exoplanet Survey Satelite). One of the questions this chapter aims to explore is what happens if/when we find them. Also, it provides a great look into the necessary purpose behind TESS.
Chapter 2, subtitled, “Other Possibilities” looks at something that I think is utterly ridiculous BUT it’s attacked from a unique perspective and is done in a way that I actually enjoyed. This chapter looks into the Simulation Theory, which is exactly what it sounds like. I, for one, think this idea is beyond dumb and farfetched, but I enjoyed the conversations that came from this chapter. The biggest proof I have against this is video games. Think of the most advanced video game that has come out for XBOX or the PlayStation. Even these games have issues with clipping and glitches–take a step back and look at car crashes, stubbing your toe, or bumping into a wall. You’d think, if we were in a simulation, that one of these times we’d notice a glitch in the code?
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are slightly less focused than the first two but are still exciting. Here, we are provided with two eyewitness examples from well-known stories: the Rendlesham Forest incident and the USS Nimitz Tic Tac incident. Instead of showing us the same videos (of Nimitz) or plain talking heads, Alioto provides some fun-to-watch animations of these incidents. It reminded me of The UFO’s of Soesterberg and how they used animation and art to tell these stories rather than dramatic recreations. It was a welcomed change over what we’ve become accustomed to.
The Alien Perspective was a breath of fresh air for Ufology and topic-like. With exception to referring to AATIP as AATP, and for even mentioning it at all, Part 1 of The Alien Perspective was an all-around joy to watch.
