Area 51

Area 51 (2015)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Oren Peli

Starring: Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg, Ben Rovner, Jelena Nik, Roy Abrahamsohn

From: Several different companies

I watched this on a whim last night, even though I suspected it would be bad. It was. Find out why below:

This was not on my agenda last night to see this film; I happened to be looking at Amazon Prime (along with looking at all the Amazon Prime Day deals going on at the time) and I suddenly noticed this was now on the service. I was curious, even though among most previous viewers it was about as popular as a venereal disease. Even in 2015 the movie must have seemed dated, with the found footage trend flaming out and the old aspect of the characters having the same first names as the actors portraying them.

I know a lot of people don't like the series at all but I've enjoyed most of the Paranormal Activity movies (in the future I'll give proper reviews to most of them, so I can explain better what I like and don't like) and as director Oren Peli created what unexpectedly became a profitable franchise, I figured I should watch the only other movie he has directed-he has stuck to producing things-with the knowledge this has a toxic reputation and it actually began filming way back in 2009 and there were reshoots a few years later and it was not until 2015 that this received a very limited release; the first Paranormal Activity this is not.

The thing is, at first it is not so bad, even when you take into account the usual found footage trappings. Some young men who are tools decided to try and sneak into Area 51. It's natural for people to be curious about the secretive United States Air Force base in Nevada, when the government only confirmed its existence a few years ago and what actually happens there is a mystery. The best guesses is that secret weapons are tested there, along with experiments on military aircraft. But it should be no shock that due to the secrecy, there have been plenty of conspiracies, including the idea that aliens are somehow involved. Anyhow, one of the guys has become dangerously obsessed so that's the impetus behind attempting something so risky.

We see them get ready and they have a bunch of equipment to try and defeat all the layers of security Area 51 has. There's also a skeptic named Ben who is only there to drive everyone else to the site and wait for them to return. I don't know if it was the intent but I usually sided with Ben; of course his buddies are insane for even attempting such a feat and becomes increasingly scared when they don't call it off at the last minute. Real-life locations (such as the Little A'Le'Inn restaurant/hotel in the tiny town of Rachel, Nevada) are shown.

Sure, it's silly that those people actually managed to sneak onto the base, but they try to explain it away. Then, they enter a building... I did not think of it right away, but aside from how you'd suspect there would be more people around-even in the middle of the night... why are there no security cameras inside any of the buildings? That is a fundamental logic flaw and the movie completely falls apart there. I realize you can't have a movie if there were cameras but perhaps the film shouldn't have been made. That is not even factoring in all the nonsense which you see happen and the movie just becomes lame & cliché. This is not the worst found footage I've ever seen, but it's still pretty bad and a lot of it is what you'd probably predict even before you finish watching the first few minutes.

Even watching the kookiest and most aberrant YouTube conspiracy videos about Area 51 would provide more entertainment value than this drivel.