Laudably resisting the temptation to overdramatise the tale of real-life logger Travis Walton (Sweeney) who claims he was abducted by aliens while his mates looked on, this UFO yarn is fairly gripping but wimps out of coming up with an intelligent explanation for what happened.
When Travis disappears in the vicinity of a molten orb-like UFO on the evening of November 5,1975, the sceptical local constabulary finger his co-workers for murder, particularly bad egg Allan Dallis (Sheffer), getting the sniffer dogs out and giving the forest a good going over. Milking the whodunnit scenario for a pint or two of tension, ironically it's when Travis reappears that the tale, touted as a true story, haemmorrhages credibility.
Though the re-enactment of what happened on the UFO is genuinely scary, it is so derivative of science fiction as to scupper plausibility. Not only do Travis' aliens look like grown-up squinty-eyed E.T.s, but also the equipment they use to operate on him is reminiscent of a sadistic dentist's - a more credible explanation being that this is the nightmare fantasy of someone who had traumatic cavity work as a youngster and overdosed on the sci-fi canon.
Never scratching below the surface "facts" of the story, this is too thin and unsophisticated to truly compel, and perhaps the greater puzzle is how doubting Thomas police investigator Frank Watters (Garner) can mechanically resist the loggers' claims without once positing the theory of group LSD abuse.