A found footage film, The McPherson Tape (which is also known as UFO Abduction) opens with a title crawl that tells the viewer that what they are about to see is both and also the most compelling evidence to date that aliens are visiting Earth.

On October 8th, the Van Heese family gathers to celebrate the fifth birthday of Michelle.  Michael, the youngest of the Van Heese brothers, is home from college and he’s brought his new video camera with him, which he uses to film the party.  At first, his brothers give him a hard time about both his new beard and his camera but soon, everyone has bigger things to worry about.  When the power suddenly goes out, Michael and his brothers go outside to investigate.  While doing so, they stumble across what appears to be a spaceship and three humanoid aliens standing outside of it.  The brothers run back to the house and, eventually, the aliens follow.

The McPherson Tape was one of the first found footage films and it stays true to the rules of the genre to an extent that more recent examples have not.  That means that the 66-minute film plays out in real time.  There’s no background music.  The sound quality is poor.  The footage is grainy and sometimes out of focus.  This is one found footage film that actually looks like found footage, with the only thing giving the game away being the rubber alien masks worn by the actors playing the invaders.  Just as in real life, it’s not always exciting.  There are moments of dead space where both the audience and the McPhersons are waiting to see what happens next.  But because the film feels authentic and it features a cast of unknowns who do a good job of acting scared and confused, it’s much more effective than some of the slicker examples of the genre that have come out in recent years.

Director  Dean Alioto later remade The McPherson Tape with a bigger budget professional actors.  In 1998, the remake aired on the UPN under the title Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County and supposedly caused a panic when some viewers though it was an actual documentary.  For my money, though, the original is still the best.