FLATWOODS is a mixed real footage/found footage/mockumentary based on a real event that happened in the Flatwoods, West Virginia in 1952. A group of people reported seeing a creature with distinctly alien features subsequent to the sighting of an unidentified flying object in the same area.
The movie creates a fictional story around the daughter of one of the witnesses who decades later tries to get to the bottom of things via making a documentary. Naturally, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy.
The cinematic aspects of this film are extremely uneven. The special effects are not half bad, and some of the shots reveal a good eye for composition. But then, many of the dramatic scenes seem downright amateurish. The editing is choppy, which is exacerbated by the frequent test signal screen transitions. The story is trite and full of conspiracy cliches. It also ends rather abruptly, which is surprising given the short running time. Maybe the budget ran out.
On the content side, the film seems to be geared toward the crowd that has already bought into reptilian conspiracy theories, which appear to have their origin in the science fiction TV series V (1983).
I did not know about the Flatwoods incident and therefore consulted Wikipedia to attain a bit of a background. That is when I became aware that the film strawmans skeptical arguments. In an interview with one of the experts, he lists two skeptical arguments, that the witnesses were high on moonshine or on paint, and then (with the interviewer) giggles at the silliness of these suggestions which obviously just reflect desperate efforts at a massive cover-up. In contrast, the Wikipedia article mentions a documented meteor on that date in combination with the possibility of the sighting of a barn owl which, viewed from a certain angle with the brush underneath, might have given the appearance of a much larger alien figure.
Whatever it was, the movie would have been elevated by engaging with skeptical arguments more seriously. Because the conspiracy seems so far out, when it is finally revealed, it actually just reveals the wide gap between how seriously the movie takes itself and how seriously it can be taken by someone who is not already a believer in reptilians.
The only part of this movie worth watching is the "UFO in the woods" scene at the very beginning.
