‘Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County’ Is The Perfect Thanksgiving Horror Movie
Thanksgiving is a holiday based on contradictions. It is a celebration of what we’re thankful for, but was founded in colonialism. It’s all about being with family, but oftentimes that family brings us anxiety and rage rather than comfort and love. Thanksgiving exists in this strange liminal space between Halloween and Christmas. It’s part of the nebulous holiday season that seems to stretch longer and longer with each passing year.
Basically, Thanksgiving is really weird and it’s something I grapple with every year. I’ve had my fair share of terrible Thanksgiving dinners, like when my brother stole my mom’s credit card and spent thousands of dollars trying to cover up a PayPal scam he fell for. That’s why I absolutely adore Dean Alioto’s made-for-TV found footage film Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County. It’s a film that perfectly encapsulates the strange contradictions of Thanksgiving, all while aliens wreak havoc on a crumbling family unit.
Now, Alien Abduction has a strange production history. It’s actually a remake of Alioto’s 1989 film The McPherson Tape, which is quite possibly the first found footage film. The McPherson Tape is a horrifying account of an alien invasion during a kid’s birthday party. It’s mundane, and feels just like a family home video; there’s no story or point to what’s going on (until the aliens appear). Then, nine years later, Alioto remade the now cult classic. This time he shifted the focus to Thanksgiving and added more action and alien horrors. Reorienting the narrative from a birthday to a holiday all about being together leads to a harrowing story about a family pretending everything is OK in the face of trauma and tragedy.
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Alien Abduction takes place on Thanksgiving Day at the remote family home of the McPhersons. There are three brothers, a sister, a mother, and a gaggle of partners and kids who flit around the house in preparation for dinner. The youngest, Tommy, grabs the video camera and chooses to document the gathering for posterity’s sake. But the camera quickly begins to reveal the complexities of the McPherson family.
Their father has recently passed and every family member is grieving in their own way. For their mother, it’s heavy drinking, noted by the glass of red wine that never leaves her hand. For the eldest brother Kurt, it manifests as trying to be the father figure through aggressively ordering everyone around. Then, for youngest brother Tommy, it’s desperately asking for help to deal with mom’s drinking, only to be told it’s his job to fix it. This is a family in the throes of grief, and yet no one seems to want to talk about it. And what speaks to the Thanksgiving spirit more than pretending trauma doesn’t exist?
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We can’t forget Kurt’s racism that manifests as their sister Melanie arrives with her boyfriend Matthew, who happens to be Black. He gives Matthew the cold shoulder and asks his brothers, “why didn’t she tell us he was Black?” To the brothers’ credit, they let out a chorus of “why does it even matter?” It’s an incredibly unnerving moment that speaks to an unfortunately common experience of witnessing racism from family members and not knowing what exactly to do or say. This is only made worse when Kurt stops himself from yelling racial slurs at Matthew mere minutes later. Before the aliens even show up, Alien Abduction perfectly, and painfully, captures what it means to be home for the holidays.
Then the aliens arrive. They burst into the film with a flash of light and a giant spaceship that the brothers discover in the neighbor’s pasture. These are not the type of extraterrestrials who come in peace. No, they’re here to destroy, as made evident by their red laser beams that burn and slice through human flesh. And yet, even with three witnesses screaming about the invaders, no one believes them. Instead, their mother continues to usher them to the dinner table, laden with turkey and all the fixings.
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The dinner table here, and at most Thanksgiving dinners, symbolizes normalcy. The turkey is there, along with the mashed potatoes and stuffing, so everything is how it should be. This is a place for peace, a place to pretend that everything is OK. But it’s a false symbol. That oblong piece of wood weighed down with food and emotional baggage can’t magic away death, sadness, or the extraterrestrial threat lurking right outside the window. Just like you can’t outrun grief, the McPhersons can’t deny the presence that is determined to destroy their Thanksgiving dinner. Aliens don’t have the holiday, after all.
On top of emanating the perfect Thanksgiving ethos, there are quite a few films that owe a lot to Alien Abduction. Released a year before The Blair Witch Project, Alien Abduction includes an on-camera confession scene that is a direct precursor to Heather’s own tear-filled confession in Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Merrick’s found-footage phenomenon. In Alien Abduction, Tommy retreats to the bathroom for a brief reprieve from the chaos, a coping mechanism I’m all too familiar with. While I’ve never been the victim of an alien abduction, the bathroom has seen many of my tears during more explosive dinners. As Tommy places the camera down on the counter and starts to talk, I’m reminded of the times I’ve called my boyfriend, now fiance, hyperventilating about whatever is happening right outside the door.
Also Read: BLAIR WITCH: Why Adam Wingard’s Found Footage Reboot Failed
Sometimes, all you can do is sit on the toilet and talk about what you’re feeling. It may not make sense, but at least you’re getting out of your head. Tommy is grappling with his imminent death at the tender age of 16. Tommy is still a baby and yet he has shouldered his mother’s trauma and his brothers’ grief. On top of that, he’s been trying to keep everyone calm in the face of death. It’s absolutely harrowing to watch as you, and Tommy, know nothing but doom awaits him. And yet he still wants to acknowledge what’s going on. Perhaps it’s too little, too late, but it’s acknowledgment nonetheless.
Sanchez and Merrick wanted to capture that emotional gut punch in The Blair Witch Project, and they sure were successful. There is something about that direct address to the camera and being so emotionally raw with whoever may be watching that makes these moments feel like more than fiction. It’s more uncomfortable than any jump scare because we are meant to sit with these feelings. We are forced to acknowledge the emotional weight of the impending tragedy.
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County is a triumph that takes the mundane act of Thanksgiving dinner and makes it heartbreaking and absolutely terrifying. The found-footage format lends itself to a personal feel that makes the film feel all the more real. Thanksgiving horror is hard to come by. But this is a piece of genre filmmaking that understands what makes this holiday so terrifying. It captures the contradictions of the celebration and the complexities of family, with an alien abduction added for good, horrific measure.
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