If you were a child of the 90s, few experiences were probably as traumatic as that one time you rented Fire in the Sky on VHS. The film seemed to come at a time when the public’s paranoia around the alien abduction phenomenon had reached a fever pitch as the film recounts one of the most famous and well documented cases for the big screen.
Fire in the Sky was just recently re-released on DVD by the fine folks at the Warner Archives.
The film is the story of 6 loggers who, on November 5, 1975 in Snowflake, Arizona, while coming home from working in the forest, encounter an unidentified flying object. One of the men, Travis Walton (D. B. Sweeney) foolishly gets out of the truck to investigate and is hit with a bolt of light throwing him across a clearing. The men suspect Travis is dead, retreat and circle back only to find no sign of him. When the men return to town and recount their story to the sheriff, it’s simply assumed one of the men killed Travis, until he shows up 5 days later naked and severely traumatized.
Fire in the Sky was actually the second and better-received studio film to capitalize on the alien abduction paranoia trend in this manner, the first being Communion. Both films were based on books by survivors of an alien abduction experience; but Fire in the Sky tackled the story more as straightforward fact than fiction and I think that is why it’s honestly the more effective of the two. Communion was more ambiguous about what actually transpired, which wasn’t helped by Christopher Walken’s bizarre performance and the fact the author of the book even distanced himself from the film due to the liberties taken with the source material.
The one thing that tends to stick with most folks about Fire in the Sky is an uneasy tension that slowly builds throughout, until you get to the infamous last 10 minutes in the third act. This is when we find out just what happened to Travis Walton during those five days. Being a big fan of the alien abduction sub-genre, I have to say even 21 years later the sequence is still brutally effective and holds up with some really great practical effects aided by cinematography by Raimi regular Bill Pope.
The performances leading up to that point and the solid script by sci-fi scribe Tracy Tormé are what really gives the film some serious credibility and emotional weight when it finally makes that turn. The first two acts play out more like your traditional murder in a small town procedural than you’re probably expecting. It’s only because there is that foundation, both story and character-wise, that you are truly there with Travis when the film descends into his experience.
So my biggest question sitting down to check out Fire in the Sky, was did the film still hold up? Taken out of the context of the time period, the film is still a great sci-fi/horror entry into this strange almost forgotten sub-genre of Alien Abduction. If you think I’m exaggerating at just how prevalent this actually was in the collective consciousness, even Disney got in on this strange trend with the children’s alien abduction classic Flight of the Navigator. Fire in the Sky is a strange relic of its time that’s definitely still worth checking out for a great throwback scare, and thanks to the Warner Archives you can do just that.
