Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Encounters’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About People Who Have Seen UFOs, Aliens And Other Unexplained Phenomena
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Encounters is a four-part docuseries, directed by Yon Motskin, that examines different cases where people saw unexplained phenomena, like strange lights, alien spaceships, or even aliens themselves, and how those sightings were dismissed by both the federal government and the people in their lives who didn’t experience the phenomena firsthand.
ENCOUNTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A house in the middle of a field. A man pulls up in a pickup truck. Then we hear Eddy Weiss, a Homeland Security consultant, talk about the lights he saw when he moved to his Stephenville, TX home in 2020, and how he found out that those sightings were pretty common.
The Gist: In the first episode, a 2008 sighting of bright lights in the Stephenville, TX area is examined. It’s an unusual case because the sighting wasn’t just reported by one or two people, but by hundreds of people at the same time. The people who saw those lights, including businessman Steve Allen and constable Lee Roy Gaitan, were members of the community who weren’t inclined to tell tales about alien sightings, but they both saw what they saw, and both became obsessed with the fact that there might be something out there that was bigger than themselves. Allen admits that his experience got him so involved in finding answers that his marriage and business suffered.
Others, such as Weiss and Matthew Roberts, a Naval cryptologist, experienced seeing fast-moving objects in the sky at other points in time — Roberts talks about the Gimbal event from 2015, radar footage of which was released to the media.
One of the things that all of these people have in common is the idea that seeing something that could be from an otherworldly being, whether it’s another planet’s living beings or, in Weiss’s belief, “messengers”, shakes people to their core because of the confirmation that something bigger than themselves actually exists.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There have been man series that talk about people’s encounters with unexplained phenomena. In this case, Encounters has the feel of a modern-day In Search Of…, mainly because of the doubt that accompanies people’s accounts of their experiences.
Our Take: The other cases examined by Encounters include a 1994 alien sighting in Zimbabwe, a close encounter at a school in Wales, and reports of lights seen over the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 disaster there.
The series definitely has a hopeful vibe to it, presenting the reports of its witnesses without any kind of skepticism or doubt. In fact, much of what’s presented in the first episode shows what happens when the people who report these experiences are doubted and dismissed, with the federal government being the prime perpetrator of this kind of dismissal.
The credulity the filmmakers give the witnesses can be seen in how much time they give to Weiss, who truly thinks that the lights are angels or some sort of “messengers”. He goes on later in the episode to describe how, as he homeschools his eight kids and starts off with a Bible lesson, the examples of these phenomena he and others seen bring Scripture into real life. Whether you agree with that or not, you have to give Weiss credit for being as sure of himself and what he saw as some of the other witnesses interviewed in the episode.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “Nothing I am saying is anything new,” says Roberts. “It’s just a matter of are you going to believe it or not?”
Sleeper Star: Oh, we definitely have to give this to Weiss for tying UFOs to Scripture and having it sound even somewhat believable.
Most Pilot-y Line: As with most series like this, there are dramatic reenactments dotting the footage. These are better than most, but still aren’t great.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Encounters is a relatively dull docuseries that won’t persuade you to change your mind about the source of the unexplained phenomena featured in the series, no matter what you believe about them.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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