Sightings (2017)

What a way to start your retirement.

Tom Mayfield just left his job as local Sheriff to spend more time on his family ranch with his daughter.

But strange things have been happening and he’s planning to install a new security system when he makes a terrible discovery: the naked bodies of three young women, whose internal organs have all been removed.

Not only is he the main suspect, but the women are from hundreds of miles away and there are no tracks and no explanation of how they got in his field.

But his conspiracy theorist brother-in-law thinks he knows what is happening: the same thing that happened  to Tom’s wife, who didn’t just abandon her family as Tom thinks.

Before long, an expert in cryptids comes to help, and they all learn that whatever is happening, Tom’s daughter may be the next victim.

Sightings was one of those films which make a few festival appearances before moving to VOD.  And it isn’t hard to see why it made such an easy transition as  it generates a fair amount of suspense, atmosphere and mystery on what had to be a minimal budget.

Now, if you are looking for lots of gore and hideous creature effects, with or without chestbursters, this one isn’t for you.  Far more is suggested or heard than shown and the creature’s appearances are deliberately kept very minimal.  I suspect, considering what we do see of the suit, that this was a good choice.

Instead, we have an intelligent and suspenseful film with a few new twists.  While far too many of the UFOs and abductions subgenre seem more like supernatural horror than science fiction — or, far worse, like bad religious films (as bad as such religious films as A.E: After Earth or Battlefield Earth) — Sightings is far more down to Earth as the creature they are fighting, whatever its powers and technological advantages may be, is a real and substantial creature that isn’t immune to bullets.

I won’t pretend that Sightings is an absolute must-see film.  It isn’t.

But it is entertaining and reasonable well made, with a solid emotional core, a logical story, and a real sense of threat.

And it is nice for once in a horror film that someone does tell them to shoot the thing in the head to make sure it’s dead.  It’s nice not to have to yell that at the screen for a change.

You can do far worse than Sightings.

And you don’t even have to try very hard.

(Watch For free on Tubi)

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