Written and directed by Michael Mazzola
Starring: Dr. Steven M. Greer, Jeremy Piven, Jeremy Sheehan, Adam Michael Curry, Joe Martino, Jan Harzan and Dr. Russell Targ
Running time: 2 hours

by Hunter Bush

Where do I even start, y'all? In Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, Dr. Steven M. Greer asks viewers to accept strange truths: that intelligent life exists beyond our planet, that world governments have chosen to cover up most of what they know about the ETs and that contact between them and us is not only possible but is actively happening, though perhaps not in the way you think. The movies would have us believe that to communicate with other intelligences, we'll have to use some "universal language" like music (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) or mathematics (Contact), but the real mode of communication is both simpler and much more complex. Dr. Greer's hypothesis is that the true universal language is the primary thing binding us to any intelligent life that may be out there: consciousness itself.

In addition to holding multiple medical degrees, Dr. Greer has been trained as a Transcendental Meditation teacher, a practice he came to after a near-death experience expanded his concept of what true consciousness was. It was while meditating that Greer experienced his first interaction with a being from another world and during subsequent interactions apparently established protocols for contacting them further, a practice that he implores all who watch the doc to engage in for the betterment of the human race; a practice that he is willing to teach you...for the $7 purchase of his app.

Dear readers, I am a person built to deal with cognitive dissonance - the holding of two diametrically opposed thoughts or opinions simultaneously - so I feel I am uniquely qualified to tell you that I largely believe most of what Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind's talking heads are saying but I'm still wary of anything that tries to mobilize the masses. Especially when it ends with a backdoor sales pitch. That's why I mentioned the app early on - something the filmmakers did not, choosing instead to drop it in during the final call to action under swelling, hopeful score - and why I'll also mention my own sales pitch right up front. I will include my Venmo at the end of the article and if I raise $7 in donations from readers, I will download Dr. Greer's app and write a subsequent article on my experiences with it.

Back to the movie: The doc is divided into four parts, a prologue and three chapters - their titles, incidentally, are "Blood & Treasure", "The Crossing Point of Light" and "A New World" respectively - each one so densely crammed with theories, data, concepts and testimonials that they could have stood to be their own documentary. Blood & Treasure deals primarily with the almost worldwide governmental covering up of UFO data and the supposed reasons behind it - that governments want humanity to continue to view ourselves as having sovereignty over the planet (the governments would thereby maintain their control over us, of course).

The Crossing Point of Light deals with the theoretical (or perhaps not quite so) means by which UFOs travel, exist and are controlled, essentially a parallel plane of existence composed entirely of consciousness with each person, plant and entity's individual consciousness as a drop in an ocean. It goes further into studies done on random number generators interpreting how consciousness (in essence, thinking at them) affects their randomness. It's not a test of psychic abilities but it's not NOT a test of psychic abilities, y'know what I mean? The chapter elaborates on the various paranormal skills that master meditators have been said to possess - telepathy, flight, phasing through solid objects, precognition, bi- and trilocation (being in two or more locations at once) and remote viewing, among others - and how they are skills all conscious beings are capable of achieving once we are able to access that higher level of thought, called Field Consciousness. It is through this Field Consciousness that we would theoretically be able to pilot UFOs (or UnFlObs as I promised Allison I'd refer to them) and how we are apparently able to contact them.

Finally, A New World describes the possible benefits of open communication between extraterrestrials and humanity (the chapter's title is taken from an anecdotal quote an ET gave a general who asked what the benefit of non-violent relations would be) and addresses the military's smear campaign against extraterrestrial life, partially perpetuated through the movies. One member of Greer's group describes an experience he had wherein the hearing loss he had struggled with throughout his adult life was cured by an interaction with a red orb.

Listen gang, it's wild stuff and quite a lot of it. The documentary, itself, comes at you with the energy and sheer volume of concepts of a cokehead cornering you in the kitchen at a party. It doesn't help that it's narrated by Jeremy Piven who is exactly who I would cast to play the fictional cokehead character in this scenario! Other celebrity cameos include archival footage of Ben Affleck (from the Argo press tour) saying he "wouldn't be surprised" to find out Hollywoo was full of CIA agents and Tom DeLonge, co-founder of both Blink-182 (notable pop-punk band) and To The Stars (originally a record label and publisher which eventually added - I shit you not - science and aerospace divisions).

Now's as good a time as any to explain the various Kinds of Close Encounter. A Close Encounter of the First Kind (a C.E.1) is simply viewing an unidentified flying object (or UnFlOb, remember). C.E.2 is viewing some tangible evidence left by said craft such as crop circles, detritus or debris. A Close Encounter of the Third Kind (after which the 1977 film is named) is viewing the "pilots" of such a craft and, fun fact, the film actually ends with a C.E.4; the bringing aboard of a human onto an extraterrestrial craft. A Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind, nominally the central point of this documentary, is an instance of human-initiated contact with an extraterrestrial being. As a thread, the viability of C.E.5 is woven throughout the doc but occasionally gets buried underneath all the other raw data Jeremy Piven is throwing at you, so you occasionally have that "lightbulb" moment where you suddenly remember exactly what you were supposedly talking about. In that way, watching this flick felt a lot like being on drugs without actually having to be on them.

As far as the doc clearly stating its message, I'm not entirely sure what that message would be but I'd guess that one specific point raised in the third chapter is as solid a unifying theme as any. After describing the process of creating a superfluid state in liquid helium by super cooling it, and making some analogy about how it only takes changing 1% of the helium to change what it's defined as, Dr. Greer asks us watching to join them in their efforts to use guided meditation to calm the world and to invite extraterrestrials here and thus usher in a new era of human consciousness. If 1% of something is enough to change what that thing is then we only need 1% of humanity to participate. I think a more easily understandable metaphor would be that old joke - "What do you get when you add a spoonful of shit to two gallons of ice cream? Two gallons of shit." but I guess that's not the positive and uplifting visual Greer & co would want to go with here.

Again, I think each segment of this could stand to be its own feature, or perhaps this should have been released as a miniseries like McMillions (which was excellent) but, as it is, there's just so much to take in, and I'm at least partially in the bag for aliens from the jump! I've always been a dyed-in-the-wool weirdo beardo at heart. Hell, I'm a self-professed magic practitioner (I prefer the term "manwitch" to the alternatives btw) but I still think this is a lot to ask the average viewer to swallow. Unless it's not made for the average viewer at all.

There are not exactly "a lot" but still multiple instances of folks interviewed talking about YouTube (and in one upsetting, yet hilarious, instance how "drama from YouTube" can ruin a Transcendental Meditative experience) as well as clips of Dr. Greer appearing on both Joe Rogan's and Aaron Paul's video podcasts and I'm starting to realize that YouTube is where it's at, UFOlogically speaking. So perhaps then this flick isn't meant to mobilize the masses to get onboard with Dr. Greer's ends, but to monetize the ones already onboard through his app or by ordering this film through Vimeo. And thus we have reached my pitch:

Oh hello. I didn't see you there. Please come in. My name is Hunter Bush and I'm a writer, practitioner of magic and believer in the possibility of most, if not all, supernatural phenomena. In fact, I believe there's probably a unifying Supernatural Umbrella theory that could explain all spooky-ooky happenings from UnFlObs to ghosts to bigfoots and everything in between, but that's a different article entirely. I, having watched Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, am open to the idea of investigating further if that's something you, dear readers, would want. If just seven of you donate one mere dollar each, I will download Dr. Greer's app, read or watch or listen to all of its included materials, honestly attempt Transcendental Meditation and report back with my findings. My Venmo is @HunterMBush. Please include an emoji of either an alien or a UFO so that I know why I would be receiving a surprise dollar, and if I reach my, what I think is an extremely achievable $7 goal, then we're good to go, y'all.

Long Live the Movies and see you on the other side!

Watch Close Encounters of The Fifth Kind on demand Friday, April 7.