Directed by Robert Lieberman
Starring D.B. Sweeney, Robert Patrick, Craig Sheffer, Peter Berg and James Garner
Funny story about this movie - it took me something like 20 years to watch it.
Sometime in 1994, I tuned in to an HBO showing of Fire in the Sky due to the fact that I was a bona fide UFO fanatic. The ads for this movie were something else for a ten-year-old who had checked out every UFO and paranormal book that the public library (remember those?) had to offer, and this movie didn't disappoint...for about 90 minutes. The movie's money sequence was ticking by, this insanely creepy alien abduction scene depicting the main character attempting to escape from an alien craft only to find another human onboard with his innards ripped out. The conclusion of this epic tale is that the Lick Ness Monster's mommy told him to shut the movie off.
Go ahead and laugh. But don't f**k with mom.
I couldn't tell you why it took me all this time to track down a DVD copy of this movie, because this flick has more than stood the test of time. I can also report that having finally seen the rest of that alien abduction scene, it has every bit of hype that it's built up as one of the creepiest alien-related things ever committed to film, which more than justifies my decision to put this movie in my horror movie blog. Dammit.
For the uninitiated, this movie purports to be based on a true story. More specifically, a book titled "The Walton Experience" by one Travis Walton, who allegedly endured this experience in 1975 while on a logging job. Walton is played in the movie by D.B. Sweeney, who does an absolute slam-bang job. Chalk Sweeney up into the "why didn't this guy make it bigger?" file, because I've liked him in just about everything I've seen him in. At the very least, surely, this guy has more charisma and likability than, say, George Clooney. Yeah, suck on it, Cheshire Cat. Interestingly, while Walton gets a lot of screen time here, it's actually his best friend Mike Rogers (Robert "T-1000" Patrick) who is the star of the show. A family man with two kids and a younger sister who happens to be dating Travis, it's Patrick who gets the unenviable task of making the emotional part of the story pop, and he's more than game for the task. The script springs us right into the intrigue, as Rogers and his team of loggers speed back from the wilderness for reasons that we aren't aware of yet. Before long, they are telling their incredible story to the town Sheriff and Lieutenant Frank Watters (James Garner), a cowboy-hat wearing scenery chewer who serves as the chief representative of law enforcement throughout.
That story begins with scenes establishing Mike, Travis and the rest of the team. There's bad seed Allan Dallis (Craig Sheffer), sensitive guy David Whitlock (Peter Berg), Texas transplant Bobby Cogdill (Bradley Gregg) and 17-year-old Greg Hayes (Henry Thomas), all of whom instantly recognizable in their traits, and each actor fitting each one like a glove. While the script gives a decent amount of time to each dude, it's Sheffer who shines the brightest whenever he's on screen; you totally buy him as this guy with a long rap sheet who totally despises nice guy Travis for no apparent reason, and the tension that they project is palpable through the screen.
And then, the abduction sequence. On their way back from a cutting assignment, the guys see fiery red light in the forest sky. Thus begins the strange odyssey of Travis Walton, who gets out of the truck to investigate a bizarre hovering craft overhead only to get jerked around (but not jerked off, as Jim Ross would say about a ladder match-interfering Lita) by an invisible force. Believing him dead, Mike speeds away, a choice that he comes to regret dearly as the movie goes on. The panic subsides, and eventually Mike drives back to look for Travis, only to find that he has disappeared from existence.
Of course, nobody in the town believes their story. Even if you don't know anything about this real-life case, none of the stuff in Fire in the Sky will shock you. A decent portion of the middle of the movie concerns the police investigation into Mike Rogers and his team, with Frank doing his best Jim Rockford routine as he sweats Mike. Most of the townsfolk suspect Dallis, the guy with the criminal rap. And never trust a white guy who wears a do-rag. While none of this stuff is minty fresh, it really does hit hard just how much the disappearance eats away at Mike's soul. The soft-spoken tough guy role is one that Patrick has done on more than one occasion, but I've never seen it done better than here. There's a great "climax before the climax" bit as Mike and the boys agree to undergo a lie-detector test, which reveals that all of them are telling the truth.
And then Travis shows up again, naked, traumatized, and suffering from frequent flashbacks that get shown to the audience.
Now, the movie really is a big build-up to the abduction scene. Having seen that first bit, where Travis escapes from a cocoon-like pod and bumps into the aforementioned dead body was scary enough to me as an 11-year-old kid. Now, at 32, I can wholeheartedly report that my mom made the right call back then, because the rest of the abduction scene would have absolutely f**kin' traumatized me as a kid. Even now, it's some pretty disturbing stuff, although I do recommend that everyone track down either a copy of the book or the episode of Paranormal Witness that deals with this incident for Walton's actual version of what went down on the ship. It might be slower-paced, but it actually might be a little MORE disturbing specifically for that reason.
This is a movie that definitely qualifies as a cult film. I'm actually surprised that it didn't do better in theaters in 1993, since this was smack dab in the middle of the UFO/conspiracy/paranormal gobbledygook boom. But in the previous decade, a small but loyal fanbase has found this flick and come to admire it for all of the reasons outlined above. It's slick, it has fantastic acting, and it's buildup to that one money scene is another one of those things that shows that no matter how many jump scares Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes team throw at you, nothing beats a protracted case of dead silence followed by disturbing imagery. It beats goddamn explosions every time.
*** 1/2 out of ****. It's a 20-year journey that was well worth the wait, and this is a flick that I highly recommend to all horror and sci-fi fans out there.
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