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While shooting a documentary to expose the lies of alien abductees, a provocative filmmaker and his crew encounter a young woman with a dark secret who leads them to uncover a disturbing truth.
Science Fiction has always been a big draw for filmmakers. The thought of making a movie that deals with extraterrestrial life coming to earth, is almost impossible to pass up. Even yours truly, in the over thirty years I’ve spent making independent films, has toyed with the idea, but being realistic, you need a sizable budget if you are going to indulge the audience in some onscreen alien technology, or even the lifeforms themselves. Audiences are so sophisticated these days, that anything sub-par will simply not work and your movie will fail. From Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron, and Stanley Kubrick, they have all produced sci-fi classics that are still revered today and it’s only natural for new up-and-coming filmmakers to follow suit and hope their movie might be the next “Close Encounters,” or “Star Wars,” or the aptly titled “Aliens.”
With “Beyond The Sky,” director Fulvio Sestito hasn’t made the next mind-blowing, sci-fi masterpiece but he has managed to create an intriguing and fascinating look at alien abductions. When Chris Norton (Ryan Carnes), an independent documentary filmmaker, was seven years old, his mother Nell (Danielle Burgio) and father Peter (Peter Stormare), had a big argument after which she walked out on both of them. While trying to chase her down, Peter claims that he was suddenly abducted by aliens and blacked out for several hours afterward. Throughout his whole life, up to his death, he remained steadfast in his story. As an adult, Chris has become obsessed with alien abductions and tries to out as many people as he possibly can, believing it to all be in their heads, hence, the real reason for his mother leaving wasn’t because of an alien abduction, rather, it had to do with his father being an abusive alcoholic.
Traveling to New Mexico with his friend and cameraman Brent (Claude Duhamel), they attend a gathering of people who all claim they have been abducted by aliens at some point in their life. When Emily Reed (Jordan Hinson) takes center stage and states that she was first abducted on her 7th birthday, and then her 14th and 21st, respectively, Chris is immediately taken with her, remembering that his father’s supposed alien abduction, happened on his seventh birthday. Things do not go well between them in the beginning as Chris has a hard time believing her story about blacking out after every abduction, a common element many people who claim to have been abducted corroborate. After visiting Lucille (Dee Wallace), the owner of a local sci-fi-themed shop, on the way back to their motel, Chris and Brent both experience a strange happening after stealing a supposed alien object from Lucille’s shop.
Later that night, when they reach the motel, they watch back over the footage from their SUV, which is filled with Go-Pro cameras situated throughout the vehicle for maximum exposure but they are both dumbfounded when they see the incident with the alien object, and for two hours, they sit perfectly still, staring blankly into the darkness. Naturally, both men have no recollection of the incident or the several hours they spent in a trance-like state and they both begin to freak out. When they meet up with Emily, who is only one day away from her 28th birthday, she is on her way to a local Indian reservation to meet with an old friend, who believes that the aliens might be deterred from abducting her again if they put an Indian spell on her but the spell fails, and she, Chris, and Brent leave feeling discouraged and scared. As they try to make sense of everything, a dark, ominous cloud approaches them and a huge alien spaceship emerges from the cloud. As it tries to take Emily, Chris grabs onto her and both of them are taken on board. Now, they must try to resolve, once and for all, the reasoning behind Emily’s lifelong abductions, and a dark secret that Chris never knew he concealed deep within himself.
Director Fulvio Sestito infuses the first half of “Beyond The Sky” with nice character development, dialog, and scientific facts about alien abductions but it is in the last act where we finally get to see the film’s impressive special effects and masterly CGI. Like Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Sestito cleverly minimizes the number of on-screen alien and spaceship appearances, leaving his audience wanting more and we are rewarded for our patience in the movie’s impressive finale. With a reported budget of only $1.5 million, Mr. Sestito proves that he has the ability to create intriguing movies, combined with remarkable visuals and authentic performances. Spielberg better watch out!
Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, November 6th
