Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the States and, girlfriend, what a feast it was for me! I am low-key but actually high-key #blessed for all the real relationships in my life and I’m forever grateful for it. So yes, the food was great, the company was excellent, and so was the Horror I watched. Enter Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998) which took place during a Thanksgiving Day.

This low-budget tv movie about aliens was done in a found footage & documentary style and was broadcasted in 1998, one year before The Blair Witch Project (1999), and that, for some reason, seemed like important information to disclose. When it comes to alien movies, I can confidently say this one was really interesting to watch even though I originally decided to give it a go—for the first time ever—purely because I knew that the story took place during Thanksgiving Day and I was just in the mood for some turkey vibes; I can confirm with you that I went from, Yeah, let’s watch this cute little movie to, Damn, what’s gonna happen to the McPhersons!?

The McPherson family was just chillaxing, ready to sit down and eat when suddenly there was a power outage to which the men of the house went outside to investigate and, right there and then, aliens! But not just any aliens, they were aliens with lasers! OMG! Aggressive aliens! Shook!

Tommy McPherson was the one recording the whole thing and it was amusing to see (and to listen to) the perspective of a teenage boy during a trying time like an alien home invasion… maybe it was just me but this found footage style really worked with the Midwestern family story because it organically added a layer of realism to it. Well, that and the fact that Tommy’s tape was ‘found’ by authorities after the entire family went missing and it was reviewed and discussed by a board of people (government, scientist, alleged abductees, and everyone in between) whose interest relied on finding out if the tape was ‘real’ or made up and whether the family was indeed ‘abducted’ or not.

I loved the movie, I really did, and I would like to encourage you to watch it if you are a little curious about it. By the way, IMDb said that the director’s cut was 91 minutes long and distributed on video in Europe—you can actually purchase the vhs tape, but not the dvd or a legitimate digital rental—and even though the longer version had a different ending to the *original* 45 minute tv version I found and watched on YouTube, I can still say that the way in which things ended for the family was super satisfying. #IwantToBelieve

Tommy: Shit.
Mom: What?
Tommy: My battery's almost dead.
Mom: Oh, finally.
Tommy: I have another one in my bag. Just a minute.

In Love and Fear,

-Marath