A logging crew, led by Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), returns from a job claiming that one of them, Travis Walton (D.B. Sweeney) was killed by a bolt from a UFO. Lieutenant Frank Watters (James Garner) thinks it’s a case of murder.
Quick Review: Those wacky aliens are at it again, kidnapping rednecks to carry 0ut their ghastly experiments in this supposedly true life tale (hey, the backwoodsmen took lie detector tests and all passed the second time; how could you ask for more proof than that?). Shying away from the obvious sensationalism of the topic, Fire in the Sky takes the more sophisticated route of examining how the yokels who didn’t get abducted are affected. The townspeople are looking at them as murderers (until Travis returns, which is pretty late in the film, but as this is based on the real Travis’s book, you know he’s going to show up), the police question them, families argue, and they all feel guilty for abandoning their co-worker.
And the payoff…? Well, there isn’t one. Travis comes back, and that’s pretty much it. (Well, there’s some shots of alien probing which is supposed to be disturbing but comes off as funny due to the old-man rubber suits.) This is well acted, nicely shot, and none of it matters. You know this story already. Pick up any tabloid and you can read someone’s similar account. Backwoods guy gets swiped from a pickup, anally probed, then returned. The end. It’s a joke of every standup comic and that’s all that’s offered here. There’s no new perspectives, no answers, and nothing of interest. The emotional states of the non-abductees are exactly what you’d expect. This is close to a non-story.