Jaden Jordan
- Aug 4, 2019
- 2 min read

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998)

Updated: Aug 3, 2021

The Breakdown: While filming a typical Thanksgiving meal, a young man and his family fall victim to a small group of aliens.

Watch If: You're intentionally looking for something bad.

Not If: You want to be engaged or see cool aliens.

SECONDARY FACTS

Overall Rating: 2.0

Length: 1:33

Country: USA

Language: English

Scare Factor: 0/5 (And I am Deathly Afraid of Aliens)

Gore Factor: 0/5

REVIEW

THE QUICK AND DIRTY

This movie is so bad, it's comical.

PREMISE: 2

An alien Abduction over thanksgiving. There really isn't much to be said for this one. It's a pretty standard run, made even more tedious by the ham-fisted attempts to increase the protagonist's family drama. Unfortunately, the characters are too unlikable for their extended histories to come across as anything more than time consuming.

There's nothing wrong with having a standard genre plot in a film, but typically, if you're going to keep it simple, there should be some nuance or inspiration elsewhere in the film. If every aspect of the story your telling is mediocre, as in this film, then your final product is going to be- no surprise- mediocre.

ACTING: 2

This movie really does feel like some kids decided to make a horror movie and star in it themselves, because most of the actors in this one clearly have no idea what they're doing. The entire film is a cacophony of underacting and overacting, in no particular order, to the point where I want GIFs of several reaction scenes for when I'm being particularly sarcastic via digital media.

VISUALS: 2

Full disclosure, I am terrified of aliens. No idea why, but there is nothing more fear sparking for me than a lanky, Roswell style extraterrestrial. So when this movie, you know, about aliens, falls so flat that even I can't find it in me to be afraid of the aliens, then you know something missed the mark. The effects are, by this point, extremely dated, and in more than a few places are nearly reminiscent of a middle-school power-point.

ATMOSPHERE: 2

If I wanted to be submerged in the passive aggressive antics of a family I would visit my own. Unfortunately for Alien Abduction, that aggressive frustration so unique to family gatherings is the only tone that they managed to consistently maintain. The characters are all terrible to each other, they're petty, they're dumb, and their interactions are the emotional equivalent of chewing on a file. There's no real terror from the situation, and all of the tension is cheaply reaped from poorly written, antagonistic bullcrap.

DELIVERY: 2

Everything in this film is working against it. It's an Oedipus of a film, with poor writing, poor acting, poor effects, and poor plotting. It's not even bad enough to be entertaining or memorable. It's just... not good.