Most of the time when a (horror) movie claims to be "based on true events", they're playing fast and loose with the phrase. In the case of Phoenix Forgotten, though, it's actually a little more accurate than average, as the basic premise/backstory is based on the actual 'Phoenix Lights' mass UFO sighting of 1997.
Sophie Bishop is making a documentary about the disappearance of her brother Josh 20 years previously in 1997. After witnessing the phenomenon of the Phoenix Lights during Sophie's 6th birthday party (and managing to catch them on film), Josh becomes convinced that what they all saw was extraterrestrial in origin, and sets out to make his own documentary investigating them. With the help of two of his friends, Ashley and Mark, Josh films the places where the sightings occurred and some of the witnesses and investigates possible explanations for the Lights, although it does not change his beliefs that they were alien in nature. Eventually, the three teens head out into the Arizona desert to where Josh thinks that the Lights will next appear... but the three of them never return and only a small amount of their footage is found, which tells investigators nothing. Sophie's own documentary is stumped at this point as well... until a previously undiscovered videotape emerges, showing what really happened to Josh and his friends the night they vanished...
Okay. I need to get something out of the way first. The term 'UFO' stands for Unidentified Flying Object. It does not automatically mean alien craft, and frankly, it really bothers me when the two terms are used as though they're interchangeable. I know I'm being pedantic and this is probably all related to my OCD and the fact that I've been fascinated with the UFO phenomenon since I was about six, but it's just one of my things. So while Phoenix Forgotten might use 'UFO' to mean 'alien craft', I'm going to be correcting it as we go.
Phoenix Forgotten, in fact, is another opportunity for me to pull out some of my old Ufology knowledge, as the idea of UFO sightings being recorded in the Bible - specifically Ezekiel 1:16 - is a real one. (I was taught during my Christian Theology A-Level that Ezekiel was probably suffering from catatonic schizophrenia, so make of that what you will.) The Ezekiel sighting is part of the evidence proponents of the 'ancient astronauts' theory cite, but as I've stated in other reviews of UFO-related horror, I didn't even believe that when I was 12, and I believed in crop circles back then. Regardless, I'm impressed that the filmmakers picked a lesser-known UFO 'event' to go along with the much more infamous Phoenix Lights incident.
Impressive research notwithstanding, however, Phoenix Forgotten takes a long time to get going. It's been compared by others to The Blair Witch Project, and I have to say I agree with at least part of that assessment - very little really happens in the film until the final 20 or so minutes of the film, when we get to see the contents of the mysterious videotape (that the USAF doesn't want people to see, we're told ominously). Nobody kicks a map into a creek (because there aren't any in the desert) but there's certainly growing tension with the three teens as they wander the desert and the occasional cave at night. Then one of them abruptly disappears, and the other two spend some time running around and calling his name before everything goes haywire in the film's climax. Really, now that I think about it if Ashley's name was changed to Heather and you just listened to the audio, you could probably be forgiven for thinking you were listening to The Blair Witch Project at times, but now Elly Kedward is apparently zipping around in a flying saucer (or alien gyroscope, if you want to get technical).
Perhaps one of the most surprising things about Phoenix Forgotten, though, is the fact that one of the producers was none other than Ridley Scott. You'd think that a film like this would have been well and truly in the low-budget category of found footage films, but it actually had a budget of nearly $3 million. Other than the final 10 minutes of the film, though, and some post-production video editing to make the 1997 footage look like it actually was shot in 1997, that doesn't really show itself in the film. Overall, the film's really a bit of a disappointment - it wastes a couple of good ideas like the appearance of the alien craft by only showing them briefly at the very end, and wastes time on trying to shoehorn in ancient astronaut theories when that particular plot point isn't even necessary to move the film forward.
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