Proximity

A young scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says he was abducted. He has footage, and nobody believes him. The recording is declared a fake within days and he loses his job, his standing and his ordinary life. What follows is a search for proof and encounters with others who claim the same thing happened to them. The first half works, because the subject is not aliens but not being believed. The loneliness of being the only person who knows what happened is handled better than a film at this budget has any obligation to manage. It is Eric Demeusy's first feature. He came from visual effects, which pushes the look of the film well past what it cost. It went out digitally on 15 May 2020. The flaw is the second half, where the story branches into time, secret organisations and energy weapons and loses the grounded tone it started with. The acting is uneven too. Who it is for: viewers who like low budget science fiction and effects craft. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a coherent screenplay.