The Dark Parade

Welcome to another special episode of The Dark Parade. My name is Bo, and I'm a found footage fool who wants to believe.

Telling me the camera thing isn't annoying. Yeah, it's annoying.

hey everyone uh welcome back to uh found footage fool a bonus series here on the dark parade uh this is the continuing journey of trying to figure out why it is exactly that i watch so many of these found footage movies

And we come to a point, I don't think we've done one of these yet, but this is a real subgenre of the subgenre of found footage horror movies in which some people run afoul of aliens.

And I, for one, am kind of a sucker for these. There are a number of them. What was the one we did not long ago? It was one Jamie recommended, but it had aliens in it, but it also had...

zombies and all kinds of stuff it was a real kitchen sink approach to it i can't remember the name of it now at any rate doesn't matter uh there are a bunch of these and so we're talking

This evening about a movie called The Phoenix Incident, not to be confused with Phoenix Forgotten, which is another movie that uses the Phoenix Lights incident.

in Arizona where you know a bunch of lights were seen in the sky and later they said it was flares but people said well it was too orderly to be flares it was too uh arranged in the sky

And so it's using that as a backdrop. And I do enjoy a found footage movie that sort of does that truth lie true thing.

where it borrows just enough from reality to ground itself, but ultimately is also a movie about a bunch of alien monsters stalking and attacking some found footage people.

So let's get into it. As you know, if you have listened to this show before, or if you haven't, I'll briefly explain the goings on here. We are going to examine this movie using five criteria.

so that we approach this scientifically. This isn't just some kind of gut check where I'm like, yeah, this one was pretty good. No, no, no. We are going to look at this scientifically, and we are going to begin with criteria number one.

Keeping the camera on, is there a good reason for doing so? And I would say that yes, in the case of the Phoenix incident.

It uses a healthy mixture. Like, this is all done kind of faux documentary style. So there's some on-the-ground footage that is supposedly recovered from the characters in the movie who are all...

Like weekend hobbyists, they're sort of extreme sports enthusiasts. So they have a bunch of GoPros and that kind of thing strapped to them. So 100% totally makes sense for them to be recording a bunch.

Then you have some security camera footage from a wackadoodles compound out in the middle of the desert. So you get some of that. And then, of course, there's like the actual film stuff from this documentary crew.

you know, in quotes. So, uh, absolutely. It is purely successful on the basis of keeping the camera on and why this recording is happening and all that. So, uh, so far, so good. Hey Phoenix incident.

You're doing great. Then we come to criteria number two. Are these characters that we actually want to spend time with? And this is a bit more of a mixed bag with Phoenix Incident because it does approach it like...

It's a documentary done after the fact. The whole idea is that these four guys were going out to do this extreme sports video.

out in the desert and then just went missing. And there was a tremendous search, you know, from the parents and friends and that kind of thing. And then somebody comes forward.

from the government to say, no, here's what really happened to them. And here's the video to prove that. And so a lot of the movie rests on the shoulders of the characters in question.

And most of it is okay. Interestingly, I find one of the guys in the quartet of, you know, Phoenix incident people.

is a guy named Troy Baker who plays one of the main characters Ryan there's Ryan Jacob Mitch and Glenn and uh also a crazy guy named Walton S Grayson um but we'll get to him in a minute So Troy Baker plays Ryan and Troy Baker has been the voice in just about any video game that you've ever seen.

uh or ever played it like he's all over the place from the last of us and uh the new far cry blah blah blah like the guy's been in everything has an incredible

voice acting career. So it's kind of unusual to see him in front of the camera, to be fair. So it was interesting to see him doing his thing and he's fine in it. I would almost say he's probably a better voice actor than he is.

a live actor, but maybe that's just because I'm biased because I associate the voice I hear with other characters in video games as opposed to him kind of bouncing around on screen. There's some business about like, well...

Is he going to go to California and make his way? And one of them's a musician and et cetera, et cetera. And like all that stuff doesn't really flesh out very well. Like at a certain point.

You're just getting attacked by aliens and all that relationship stuff is largely thrown out the window. Also, one of the characters is a former Marine and lost someone in combat.

is you know kind of dealing with that but again none of that stuff it's there but it's not it's not presented in a way

Like in a traditional narrative where it feels like, oh, that is the payoff of this character. And also the fact that you know that all of these characters are ultimately doomed. It's hard to feel a sense of satisfaction.

at the end of all that so the characters aren't terrible they're not the most annoying i've run across but they're also not really popping off the screen um you know when we talked about

you know, movies like Followed or Paranormal Activity, Next of Kin, and that kind of thing, there were characters in that that you genuinely liked. And I don't know that I really liked any of these characters, but I wasn't...

you know put off by their presence uh walton s grayson the uh the crazy person in the compound like she or she he is the most uh weirdly fleshed out character and that he's kind of a religious zealot but all of that is based around ufo sightings and

I don't understand. There's a point where he just becomes a monster and I don't understand quite how he survives that or whatever. Anyway, it's all a little crazy. But...

You know, I would say this is real middling in terms of character presentation, unfortunately. I think if the movie had gotten that right, it would have been great.

But it just falls a little flat there. So let's go to criteria number three, which is authenticity. Does this actually feel real?

And again, this movie does a good job with that like truth, lie, truth kind of thing where it borrows from footage from actual people. Like there's a clip of John McCain and a guy named Fife Symington.

you know, kind of politicians talking about the Phoenix lights incident and how it's still unexplained and that sort of thing. And so it does a great job of making this all feel like a thing that actually happened.

Um, the actors are good enough that they are not just doing bad improv for most of the movie.

which is also helpful. There seems to be an actual script here, which is also really good. No, I'm not saying the script is really good. I'm saying it is good that there was one because there are plenty of found footage movies where that is not guaranteed.

So that is all a positive, like the authenticity element and also the way that the documentary is kind of presented is effective enough.

that it feels like a real documentary on ufos that you might see not that i watch a ton of those because those are the it always feels like they're making a lot of assumptions and kind of laying the groundwork of their theories and their beliefs on things that are difficult to prove at best.

And so it's like, all right, well, we all agree ancient aliens build the pyramids, right? Well, so starting from that point, let's talk about this. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's go back a little bit to the whole aliens building the pyramids thing. And so there's some of that.

uh in in a lot of those documentaries and this kind of does that to you where it's like okay we're gonna take the word of this one dude um about what happened to these kids but then there's also the footage and that's

you know it does feel like a documentary for the most part there are moments where it definitely feels like this is a movie about guys being attacked by aliens um but there is that air of authenticity

So on that level, I thought it was pretty good. So keeping the camera on and authenticity, totally great.

What about watchability? Despite the fact that we are getting all these technical and sort of rationalizations of keeping the camera going.

in an effective way, in a satisfying way, is the movie a watchable movie? Is it entertaining? And here is another mixed bag, because...

On the one hand, this is sort of a step up in terms of the quality of performance. There's a lot of great technical stuff. Some of the best stuff in the movie, and actually kind of what I wish the movie had focused on more.

was sort of the revelations about the military's interaction with these aliens. And there is some CGI that borders from...

questionable to pretty good. So, and I'm never going to be one to badmouth a movie just because the effects aren't, you know, Jurassic Park level or whatever, which is still...

A strange standard to have, you know, almost 30 years after Jurassic Park. But that still got it real good. Got all that mostly right. You know, I have my questions. Like, these aliens are sort of these four-legged...

They are somewhat reminiscent of the Queen Alien from Aliens, but they walk a little bit like a dog or a crab or something, kind of low to the ground. And when you see this, I keep wondering, like, so...

These almost mindless monsters are piloting ships across the stars to come here to just fuck with us?

Eh, whatever. I'm watching a horror movie about some guys being stalked by aliens. Maybe let's put that concern on the shelf. But, eh, it still factors in.

The other problem I have with the watchability side of this is, you know, because we're doing a lot of GoPro footage.

It is a lot of shaky cam stuff. And normally that doesn't bother me. Like I don't get queasy watching these movies or anything or otherwise I wouldn't even be able to do a show like this. But it isn't.

it's not the most fun to watch and it's a lot of we're running around running through hallways in this you know shack slash compound out in the middle of the desert it

it's not terrible but there are moments where you're just like okay fine i would much rather see this in the security cam view um where you have a little bit more stability and

That kind of thing to me feels like you're just hiding what effects work you're doing to some degree. Because if you only see it for half a second.

then it looks more convincing than if you just lay the camera on it and really look at it. So some of that is unfortunate. But for those moments, you know, I'm not crazy about that. But then you have these great like...

infrared and heat vision views from aircraft overhead. And that stuff is really cool. There's one in particular where you see a guy being surrounded.

by aliens through this sort of night vision view of a helicopter that's hovering overhead where you're also getting narration from, you know, the whistleblower.

saying like look when when we saw that they had surrounded him there was just nothing we could do for him and so we just bombed the shit out of the place and it was like that stuff is pretty good

I really enjoyed that. Those views that felt more authentic because it's kind of military. And also, you don't have to do...

The heavy duty CGI work of showing the aliens, even though when they show the aliens, there are times where the aliens look totally fine. There are times when they look a little bit fake.

But for the most part, all of that is good. But in terms of just the grand scheme of watchability for this movie, is the movie kind of entertaining in and of itself?

For all the shaky cam stuff running through hallways that I didn't like, there was something that I did. So I would say this skews towards the higher end of watchability, you know, especially compared to...

delivery the last movie we did which was a real bummer um and then where just nothing happened for most of that movie there's at least stuff happening in this movie where whether it's

conversations between characters where they're trying to establish some emotion and relationships and and so forth and and also you know there's plenty of aliens attacking these guys action in the movie so it doesn't just

you know, light the fuse and then you follow that fuse until the explosion at the end, it's got a fairly decent pace. So, you know, rings in under...

an hour and a half also a good quality for a movie like this so on the watchability scale fairly high uh it is certainly a movie that if you're interested in this kind of you know ufo

uh, found footage. Hey, we have run afoul of some aliens or, you know, whatever, uh, some alien testing or, you know, there's a hundred of these. Um, then, you know, this is a pretty good one of those.

And so then we come to our last criteria for this movie, which is scares. Is the movie scary? Does it work as a horror film?

And on that level, not so much. I think there is kind of a weird goofiness to the aliens, even though they look pretty good sometimes. I still just can't get over the like...

Why are they coming here again? Are they just monsters? But if they're just monsters, how did they come up with the technology to travel faster than light?

And all of that are maybe just their motives are too complicated to divine, but a juror seems like they're just trying to invade. And there is, you know, one of those...

tags at the back end of like well keep watching the skies and i'm okay with that but i i don't know that i ever found any of the action to be terribly frightening it was entertaining sporadically but it was never really scary

And that's unfortunate because these sorts of movies are best when they are not just an examination of, hey, this is a UFO encounter that could have happened.

But that they're a little creepier, and there wasn't much creep to this. It was just, hey, we're being chased by these things, and occasionally one of them will get us. So, not entirely successful on that level.

those five criteria established and and uh thoroughly documented as we like to do here on this show um let's give this thing a final score i would come down at a solid three stars for this

which might even be on the low side. And I think I'm a little cool on the movie just because there are a bunch of these. It's a good one of them, but it still doesn't...

really scare me I never I never connected with the characters in a way where I was really worried for them it was more that I would I was constantly reminded like hey I am watching a movie about this and I wasn't ever really

swept up in the events of the movie and uh you know that that watchability aspect um even though it was entertaining um i still don't find it terribly uh captivating and terribly frightening but a three stars is out of five of course still a recommendation for me that if you enjoy

found footage movies writ large and especially if you like the sub-genre of found footage movies that is oh here are a bunch of aliens along with our heroes

then, you know, it's worth your time if this is your jam. And it certainly is my jam. Otherwise, I wouldn't do this show. So I enjoyed my time with it.

But it's not in the Hall of Greats or anything. It's not going to blow your mind. There are better versions of this. And I need to go back and watch it. But I remember thinking that Phoenix Forgotten was perhaps better.

than the Phoenix incident. But we'll come to that on another day. So that's it for now. As always, thank you so, so much.

for listening to The Dark Parade and all the bonus episodes. I hope you're enjoying these. I do enjoy watching found footage movies and then trying to come to terms with why I watch so many found footage movies.

But it's great to kind of share that with you guys. And by all means, if you have any recommendations for a found footage movie that you feel like I ought to watch, you know, you can always find me on Twitter at Dark Parade Pod.

where you can shoot me a message just at me there. Or you can find us over on Facebook at the Facebook group, The Dark Parade, which you can find by going to facebook.com forward slash.

groups forward slash dark parade and uh i'm usually monitoring that at least a few times a day so if uh if you have a recommendation shoot it to me over there and you can also

Just message me from there as well if you don't want to do it in public. You know, conduct your filthy business in private where it belongs. All right. Thanks again.

You guys are the absolute best. Thanks for supporting the Dark Parade and all the dumb stuff that I do. And there will be more coming very soon, I assure you. And until next time.

Thanks for listening to The Dark Parade, and I'm your found footage fool. See you later.