The Wicksboro Incident

Rating:
Summary: Neat little film; starts slow, but ends well...
Review: I picked ths movie out, purely on the plot synposis offered by Amazon.com, and hadn't heard anything about it at all. So it was a sort of unknown quantity once it arrived, and I wasn't teribly keen on watching it.

But once I finally did, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. I for one, hated Blair Witch Project, simply because the ending left alot to be desired, based on all the build-up of first parts of the film. But this film seems to have the opposite effect; rather than starting big and ending shamefully, The Wicksboro Incident starts slow and somewhat weak, then the last fifteen minutes it grabs you and takes you for a ride.

Succinctly speaking, this movie is a Blair Witch [imitation]. Two amateur filmmakers start off with an interview with an old Texan who reveals he was employed by the government, inventing some sort of 'Alpha-wave' detector, which has the unfortunate side-effect of revealing aliens among us, in human guise. The entire town of Wicksboro is wiped from the face of the earth; people, buldings and all. But Lloyd is spared from that fate by chance, and gets away.

Fifty or so years later, he takes these two young filmmakers back to the supposed town of Wicksboro (which doesn't exist on any map), where the do some snooping, and unfortunately run afoul of the government, who begins to chase them through the desert countryside of Texas (actually, Palmdale CA)

I will admit the film suffers from the shaky-cam syndrome that Blair Witch had, and many scenes are so dark, you have no idea what you're supposed to be looking at. But keep with it until the end, and you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: creepy as hell
Review: I saw this at the Hollywood Film Festival a year ago. It really crawled under my skin and a part near the end made the audience jump a mile. A couple of people behind me had to leave because they were too creeped out. It's made like 'Blair Witch', but I liked this better. It had the kind of story and effect on you that made you think about it long after it was over.

Rating:
Summary: creepy as hell
Review: I saw this at the Hollywood Film Festival a year ago. It really crawled under my skin and a part near the end made the audience jump a mile. A couple of people behind me had to leave because they were too creeped out. It's made like 'Blair Witch', but I liked this better. It had the kind of story and effect on you that made you think about it long after it was over.

Rating:
Summary: I was hoping for more....
Review: This is a mix of The Blair Witch Project and The X-Files. This is somewhat true, and it was mildly entertaining, but I was disappointed in that it didn't really follow through with the concept. I enjoyed The Blair Witch Project, and this takes a lot from that movie except it doesn't follow through with the concept. The basic story involves a old guy who once worked on a secret military project which ultimately met with a somewhat supicious end. Nearly all the people and all the people those people knew died mysteriously, with the excepttion of this one guy, who has managed to hide in California for the last 40 years. He decides he wants to come clean, tell his story, and the best way to do so is to get involved with these independant film makers and try to find evidence of what happened. He and a couple of others worked in a farmhouse and its' underground bomb shelter in the small town of Wicksboro, Texas. At some point Wicksboro had been wiped off the map, and all information with regards to the town vanished. The man's work involved a machine that could supposedly detect whether or not you were an alien by analying your aura, or something like that. It started off kind of slow, but picked up about halfway through. As I said before, I was a little disappointed that they really didn't follow through with the concept in that they really didn't make any effort to make this seem real, unlike The Blair Witch Project. From the credits at the beginning and the end of the movie, and the ominous background music that played throughout, I knew this was phoney. With The Blair Witch Project, atleast they tried to keep you guessing whether or not it was real. It just seems to me if you are going to make a movie like this, a documentary apparently based on real facts, play it that way all the way through. In The Blair Witch Project (TBWP), the footage was supposedly found after the disappearance of the people who made the film and was presented to help find clues as to what happened to them. In this movie, based on what happened at the end, what the conspiracy uncovered by the individuals was trying to protect, this film would have never seen the light of day, espcially not after great pains where shown as to how far certain people and groups were willing to go to protect the secrecy of the information. Yeah, I know it's just a movie, but I still feel if you are going to delve into this genre, then fully explore it, and try to maintain the 'realism' all the way through. This would include information as to where this footage came from and how it came to be released. Maybe the concept is flawed in that with this subject matter, as if it were true, it would be in certain parties best interests to keep it hidden, so we would probably not see this. That being said, there were some moments of creepiness and shock, and it was fun and funny at times (see where they stop off at a local convience store and the old man comes out with an armful of booze), but with respect to the genre, I didn't convince me the way I would have wanted it to. And the alien detecting device looked a little too polished, a little too much like a manufactured toy for me to believe it was a home made gizmo.

Rating:
Summary: I was hoping for more....
Review: This is a mix of The Blair Witch Project and The X-Files. This is somewhat true, and it was mildly entertaining, but I was disappointed in that it didn't really follow through with the concept. I enjoyed The Blair Witch Project, and this takes a lot from that movie except it doesn't follow through with the concept. The basic story involves a old guy who once worked on a secret military project which ultimately met with a somewhat supicious end. Nearly all the people and all the people those people knew died mysteriously, with the excepttion of this one guy, who has managed to hide in California for the last 40 years. He decides he wants to come clean, tell his story, and the best way to do so is to get involved with these independant film makers and try to find evidence of what happened. He and a couple of others worked in a farmhouse and its' underground bomb shelter in the small town of Wicksboro, Texas. At some point Wicksboro had been wiped off the map, and all information with regards to the town vanished. The man's work involved a machine that could supposedly detect whether or not you were an alien by analying your aura, or something like that. It started off kind of slow, but picked up about halfway through. As I said before, I was a little disappointed that they really didn't follow through with the concept in that they really didn't make any effort to make this seem real, unlike The Blair Witch Project. From the credits at the beginning and the end of the movie, and the ominous background music that played throughout, I knew this was phoney. With The Blair Witch Project, atleast they tried to keep you guessing whether or not it was real. It just seems to me if you are going to make a movie like this, a documentary apparently based on real facts, play it that way all the way through. In The Blair Witch Project (TBWP), the footage was supposedly found after the disappearance of the people who made the film and was presented to help find clues as to what happened to them. In this movie, based on what happened at the end, what the conspiracy uncovered by the individuals was trying to protect, this film would have never seen the light of day, espcially not after great pains where shown as to how far certain people and groups were willing to go to protect the secrecy of the information. Yeah, I know it's just a movie, but I still feel if you are going to delve into this genre, then fully explore it, and try to maintain the 'realism' all the way through. This would include information as to where this footage came from and how it came to be released. Maybe the concept is flawed in that with this subject matter, as if it were true, it would be in certain parties best interests to keep it hidden, so we would probably not see this. That being said, there were some moments of creepiness and shock, and it was fun and funny at times (see where they stop off at a local convience store and the old man comes out with an armful of booze), but with respect to the genre, I didn't convince me the way I would have wanted it to. And the alien detecting device looked a little too polished, a little too much like a manufactured toy for me to believe it was a home made gizmo.