[Tribeca 2024] THEY'RE HERE -- Alien Abduction Doc Does Disservice to Subjects

Review by Daniel Lima

The democratization of filmmaking has allowed many people who would otherwise never be able to make a movie the ability to do so. Sometimes, this allows for unique perspectives and the kind of passion projects that would never make it past the studio gatekeepers of Hollywood. Other times, you get something like ​They're Here, a documentary that reveals absolutely nothing about its subject matter, the people it follows, or those who put time and energy into getting it made.

This is nominally a documentary about alien encounters, or more specifically, the people who believe they have made contact with otherworldly beings. Young burnouts who believe they witnessed extraterrestrial activities, retirees who claim a cordial relationship with alien scientists, and one old man who simply wants to believe in something greater than himself. The one thing that unites them beyond their incredible experiences is… well, that gets to the heart of the problem.

All these people are residents of upstate New York and even congregate at a small festival for people who have had these close encounters. Strangely, this scene that provides such an obvious and useful structure to all the individual stories is buried thirty minutes into a movie that is barely over an hour long. Instead, the film haphazardly bounces between all these people, with no rhyme or reason and no actual narrative to push forward. It amounts to a bunch of random interviews with a peculiar ensemble.

That lack of connective tissue is an immediate indication of the lack of thematic focus that plagues They're Here. Though the people offering their own experiences often talk about reaching out to others and forming a community that will support each other as they all search for answers, the filmmakers are clearly uninterested in showing that side of these people's lives.

One would assume that in lieu of that, there is a deeper interrogation of the participants, exploring who they are and how their experiences have fundamentally changed them or what draws them to make the claims they do (or alternatively, what draws aliens to them). Since the film spends so much time bouncing between all of them, however, no one receives the definition that could prove insightful. As far as this film is concerned, their entire lives began and ended with their fantastic accounts and interest in UFOs. That does not offer a particularly compelling portrait of these people.
​
That manipulation that reduces these people to only UFO cultists is evident through much of the filmmaking craft. The festival shows multiple characters who we have been introduced to talking to each other for seemingly the first time, an obvious construction that would have been less obvious had it been laying the groundwork at the start. Many conversations are shot-reverse shot as if they were in a traditional narrative film, lending each of them a suffocating sense of artifice. Then, there are the abduction sequences, which seem to exist only to get this to feature length.

If there is anything to dissect here, it is the pervading sense of loneliness and sadness that all these people share. Beyond the scorn and disbelief they are met with whenever speaking their personal truth, it's not hard to read into each of them a discontent with their lives, a sense that there needs to be something vast and powerful out there that they have been allowed to make contact with. It just so happens that that need drove them to aliens rather than religion. This is most evident in the younger people interviewed, two men who clearly have very little going on in their lives (and one who might be the least funny person to ever attempt stand-up comedy), and in an older metalworker named Steve.

Steve is an associate of a local UFO group, going to meetings and clearly being fascinated by the idea of abduction. He spends long hours in his machine shop, hoping to retire but lacking the means to do so. At the prodding of his friend who leads the group (or perhaps the filmmakers, hoping for good content), he undergoes hypnotherapy in an attempt to uncover suppressed memories of his own potential abduction. It doesn't work out, and in one of the film's few genuine moments, he expresses his dismay. "You hope that things are going to work out, and in my life, it's like it never does." He laughs, then sags into his seat and gazes at the floor.

If the team behind They're Here had any real interest in the people they were covering, regardless of how they felt about the veracity of their claims, this would be what the movie is about: people cast adrift on their home planet, gazing at the stars and dreaming of — or perhaps even touching — something more. However, the shoddy craftsmanship and lack of focus in exploring their lives is a testament to how little the filmmakers were invested in what these men and women had to say. Steve and the rest deserved better than this. ​

They're Here is screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 5-16 in New York City.

Rating: 1.5/5