So this is an early Steven Spielberg movie, right. The impression I’ve always gotten is that it was big at the time but hasn’t held up well, so is interesting more as a historical curiosity than anything else. That’s why I’ve never watched it before now; but also, it’s why I wanted to watch it now: I’ve seen multiple movies that are apparently referencing it or influenced by it, and feel like I’m missing out by not having seen it.

(And, now that I’ve seen it, I can confirm: Yep! For instance, Jordan Peele’s Nope hits very different now, just a really direct riff on some of the stuff here.)

So, as a big first point, Steven Spielberg is already a great director here. The movie is visually imaginative, with great special effects by Douglas Trumbull. It’s also full of great shots (I’m thinking here particularly of a tracking shot across a ceiling that then pans down into a mirror to good effect); and it manages to keep up a feeling of intensity despite the fact that nothing much happens for big chunks of the movie, using a frenetic soundscape and a moving camera to keep that sense of forward motion going.

But… the plot is really stupid. The basic gist of it is that people have had alien encounters, including Richard Dreyfuss. And they then go lightly mad, becoming obsessed with a particular image and sound they have stuck in their head. (This is wildly overplayed in the movie; Dreyfuss seems legitimately certifiable — even though we know he has in fact seen aliens, his actions are unhinged to the point where it seems likely that the aliens broke his brain. But from context in the movie, I don’t think we’re supposed to think this.)

For reasons that are never really explained — the movie takes for granted that you share a lot of cultural assumptions of the ’70s[1] — there’s a lot of shame around people claiming to have encountered aliens, even though there is a lot of very clear proof of their existence in the movie, including massive power outages; and of course, the government has a big coverup, and has a plan to make contact with the aliens in a way that doesn’t actually 100% make sense.

All of which is to say: Everything about this movie is great, except that the story and characters make no sense. When they’re first encountering the UFOs and it feels like a horror movie, it works well; when it gets to the post-encounter conspiracy stuff, it’s a mess.

Ultimately, I think that my impression going in was correct: It’s not worth watching in its own right, but if you’re in for some AFI-style historical context for American blockbuster movies, it’s an easy recommend.

  1. It was hard not to keep thinking that basically every scene of this movie wouldn’t work at all in a world with smartphones. Which probably is not coincidentally why we have a lot fewer stories of alien encounters now. ↩︎