Phoenix Forgotten (2017)

directed by Justin Barber
USA
87 minutes
4.5 stars out of 5
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Phoenix Forgotten is a sci-fi/horror hybrid in the found-footage format that may otherwise have disappeared among the miscellaneous sci-fi/horror movies released every year had it not been for Ridley Scott's name as a producer (and really, I have no idea where he came from). Despite there being several other movies about the Phoenix lights, I think this is a solid film and maybe the best one about the phenomena. So just a warning: This review may contain some unpopular opinions.

One of the things I actually didn't like was that it's one of those things that's only found-footage when it wants to be. It switches back and forth from a traditional style to home videos recorded by three missing persons whom the movie centers around. It seemed like there was a heavy emphasis on the nostalgia element; the home videos were made during the late 90s and there's a lot of hallmarks of the era present in them as well as an overall atmosphere of family and especially of family disrupted- the three people on the tapes are the people whom the main character in the present day is investigating, mainly because one of them was her brother. 

But outside of that my feelings towards this were overwhelmingly positive. I don't ever, and I mean ever get scared by alien movies, they're like zombie movies in that I can recognize their value but I don't think they're something I could ever be afraid of. But there's something in Phoenix Forgotten that makes the presence of aliens altogether more foreboding. This is the ultimate in alien non-appearances, we only ever see hints of the ship from afar and occasional horrifying, lightning-bolt-throwing glimpses of things in the "eye of the storm" at the end of the film. The lack of a concrete agenda, along with the lack of visual reference that would have allowed viewers to get used to the UFOs, goes towards making this feel mature and restrained, two things that I almost never see in found-footage.

Whatever else may have happened along the way, the scares are all there. In the pivotal scenes towards the end, as much of the horror comes from being a teenager alone in the desert in the freezing dead of night as it does from the presence of UFOs. This is a movie that uses unconventional ideas about what an alien encounter looks like and I'm totally willing to defend my opinion that it was excellent.