Saw Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, a found footage horror about aliens. The film is quite scary. It has no jump-scares, but has a slow burn and plenty of ominous doings. Some of these doings fall quite flat (such as when the aliens mind-control the mother into thinking that the father is still alive) but others are far more effective (the flitting about of the aliens is cheap, but always effective.) It was sufficiently scary that I frequently retreated into analysis-mode, to try and pick apart the scary machinery. It suffers a bit from failed attempts at naturalism. These people are supposed to be 'ordinary,' but of course the mother is an alcoholic (this comes up in a taped casual conversation, as all family secrets do) and one of the brothers is racist (and his sister is dating a black guy! Wuh-oh!) so there's plenty of very artificial feeling drama going on. Also, people in real life speak and act like dithering idiots (for reference, check out your own home movies) and all of the people here act like relatable, eloquent actors. Harrumph.
As I say, most of this nit-picking is the result of genuine, queasy, unsettled-ness on my part so the film was effective on some level. At its best it's very claustrophobic and tense, radiating a sense of disaster and angst. It reminds of me of Dark Night of the Scarecrow in that it is low-rent but surprisingly effective.
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