Written and directed by Daniel Myrick
Starring Michael Selle, Nicolette Sweeney, Paul Wilson, Willow Hale and Jacob Sandler

by Roderick Towers

Director Daniel Myrick is a man after my own heart. Not only did he co-create The Blair Witch Project, which gives him a forever place at my table, but I always hear him name dropping my favorite program In Search of… during interviews, which tells me that he’s got real cool dude styles. This is an open call for you, Daniel Myrick, to come over anytime to share a bowl of Franken-berry and read monster magazines. When I heard that his newest project Skyman involved alien visitation, I was intrigued. You see, in my pursuit of the unknown, I myself have had an EXPERIENCE. You see, gentle reader, when I was much younger I became fascinated by the title creature from the hit 1982 motion picture, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial. Some would even say obsessed. It culminated one summer evening when I wrote E.T a letter, placing it along with an apple and a glass of milk in the mailbox. Hey, the promise of food works for Santa Claus. The next day, I found my letter replaced with correspondence from the extra-terrestrial himself! 35 years later and I still remember that magical evening. Which is why Myrick’s latest struck a chord with me. The story follows Carl Merryweather (Michael Selle) a fellow contactee who claims to have been visited by the eponymous Skyman in his youth and all these years later can’t seem to shake the encounter. Now, on the eve of his 40th birthday, Carl is attempting to send a message to the stars to draw him back. Although the film boasts great performances and features subject matter dear to my heart, Skyman never really gets off the ground.

Now, I will tell you right now good friends, make no mistake, Daniel Myrick is a trickster. A bonafide flim-flammer. It all started when he made us believe that three documentary filmmakers got lost in the woods and, although the marketing machine isn’t building this up to Blair Witch levels of hype, there is a certain amount of subterfuge going on with Skyman. In my daily life, I’m just a card carrying member of John Q. Public and in my pop cultural peripheral vision, Skyman seemed to be presented as an honest to goodness documentary. What we have here, my fellow perusers of the paranormal, is a faux documentary or as I like to call it, a documenSTORY. Now, nobody is exactly saying that it is a documentary but they’re not quite saying that it isn’t either. The official synopsis that’s been floating around the movie news websites reads, ‘’In 1987, just days after his 10th birthday, Carl Merryweather rocked the local news community when he claimed he was visited by an extraterrestrial life form.’’ On ihorror.com (where I first heard about the project and who coincidentally produced the movie) they describe it as a ‘’docu-drama’’and reported that ‘’Myrick says he is excited about telling Merryweather’s story.’’ Funny how it’s never mentioned that Merryweather is played by actor Michael Selle. Usually, his name is listed under ‘’featuring’’ or ‘’starring’’ with no context as to his role in the film. Like I said, tricky. As the movie opened, I still wasn’t sure if I was watching a ‘’docu-drama’’ or a ‘’documenstory’’ which really is a testament to the cast that they were able to fool me for so long. When we first meet Carl, he’s being interviewed in typical documentary straight to the camera fashion along with his sister Gina (Nicholette Sweeney in a break-out role) and it feels authentic. Carl is nervous and constantly looking to Gina fo help and approval when answering the filmmaker’s questions. It isn’t what is being said but what goes unspoken between the two that tells the story. This isn’t easy to accomplish, acting natural but I bought it and it worked. Nearly everyone involved felt perfectly in sync with the world that was created for the film. My biggest question was, why approach the story this way?

When The Blair Witch Project was released part of the reason why it popped so huge was because there was nothing else like it. These days, the multimedia landscape is simply lousy with the paranormal. Ghost hunting shows, bigfoot conventions, cryptid podcasts, we are in the middle of a supernatural deluge not seen since the 70’s. In fact, the last few years has seen the growth of ‘’Small Town Monsters’’ a production company that specializes in specialty documentaries about modern creatures like the Beast of Boggy Creek and the Mothman of Point Pleasant. Each entry in the series is an examination into these strange cases featuring real people talking about their real experiences. Watching Skyman kind of reminded me of a Small Town Monsters production. The long aerial shots of the landscape, the melancholy score, the only thing that’s missing is narration by Lyle Blackburn. Myrrick obviously knows the nuts and bolts of putting together a documentary film. It looks great, hits all the right beats but again I kept finding myself asking, why go this route? If you’re going to compete with actual paranormal documentaries about actual paranormal events you’ve got to come correct, son. 

While watching, I was reminded of a similarly put together documenstory, Willow Creek (2013). Director Bobcat Goldthwait (yep, that Bobcat) unabashedly lifts the entire plot of The Blair Witch Project and just replaced the ‘’witch’’ with bigfoot. The whole setup is just an excuse to shine a light on the bigfoot community (yes it’s a thing and yes it’s awesome) and is basically a great big love letter to fans of the big man. I thought for a minute that Skyman was going to take a similar approach. At one point, Carl does attend a UFO convention, which I thought would have been the perfect opportunity to give us a little insight into the ufo culture as a whole from the ground level. Teach us a little bit about MUFON or Project Blue Book or black triangles. Later on in the movie, Carl starts talking about synchronicity and screen memory and I feel like the UFO convention would have been the perfect place to introduce and explore these concepts before they’re thrust at us so late in the narrative. While Willow Creek is about celebrating a niche outsider culture Skyman is more about navigating one man’s personal journey.    

Here’s the thing, I think if you’re going to tell your story in this format, you gotta have a good reason for it. Take for instance, Series 7. The concept here is that we’re watching a reality tv show where the contestants are actually trying to kill each other in order to win the game. It walks and talks just like reality tv circa the early 2000’s but it was using the format to make a critique on the culture that spawned the reality tv craze in the first place. When horror films dip their toe into the genre with features like Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, Lake Mungo and Ghost Watch, they take the audience’s expectations for watching a normal documentary and subvert them, in a way. Whether it’s by introducing extra ordinary elements into ordinary situations or by showing things that would be impossible for an actual documentary film crew to capture. We do get some of that in Skyman but I don’t think they pushed it nearly far enough. Like I said before, this is a character study through and through even though it’s being billed as a sci-fi/horror film. Most of the movie is spent getting to know Carl and his life and I love a slow burn as much as the next guy but the reptilian part of my brain craves a proper payoff. Look, I’m not suggesting they go full on Fire in the Sky with an ending full of ooze filled alien prison pods and rusty operating equipment but at least get my heart rate up. It’s kind of implied that maybe Carl is delusional but we as an audience know that we’re watching a movie jawn by the Blair Witch guy so it’s a good bet we’re going to see some weird shit. There is, but it starts so late in the picture and ends so quickly I left disappointed in the whole affair. That’s not to say that I’m not a fan, there’s still plenty of good ideas scattered throughout the movie but, overall, I was less than satisfied. Still Daniel Myrick, the offer stands. If you ever want to come over, I’ll save you a spot on the beanbag chair and a copy of Famous Monsters. 

Opens in select drive-in theaters June 30 and on demand July 7.