Lost in the Woods, Found No Plot
There are two kinds of found footage movies: the kind that makes you believe the footage had to be found because everyone died in a blaze of supernatural glory (The Blair Witch Project, REC, Cloverfield), and the kind where you wish someone had lost the footage on purpose. The Rendlesham UFO Incident — also known as Hangar 10 in the U.S., because apparently one bad title wasn’t enough — proudly belongs to the latter category.
Directed by Daniel Simpson, this movie takes the infamous 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO sighting — often called “Britain’s Roswell” — and somehow manages to make aliens, abductions, and government conspiracies as exciting as an overlong instructional video about metal detectors.
If The Blair Witch Project was a groundbreaking experiment in tension and atmosphere, The Rendlesham UFO Incident is the cheap knockoff DVD your uncle buys at a gas station and insists is “basically the same thing.”
The Setup: Aliens Hate Preparation
Our story begins with a message claiming this is “recovered footage from a stolen laptop,” which immediately raises the first question: who in their right mind would steal a laptop containing this much shaky footage of trees?
We meet Gus, a man so obsessed with metal detecting that he drags his girlfriend Sally and her camera-toting friend Jake into the Suffolk countryside. His plan? To find buried treasure. Their plan? To find the audience’s patience and lose it quickly.
Within ten minutes, you’re treated to long, uninterrupted shots of people walking, scanning the ground, and talking about how exciting metal detectors are. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a horror movie that doubles as an ad for hobbyist archaeology, this is your chance.
But wait — there’s tension! Because Jake clearly has a thing for Sally, who’s dating Gus, and Gus clearly knows it. This is not so much a love triangle as it is a love obtuse-angle, since all three characters have the chemistry of damp bread.
They stop at a pub, where Jake flirts with Sally and finds a newspaper about the Rendlesham UFO incident. You’d think that would set up some foreshadowing, but no — this is a film that treats alien lights the way a dentist treats cavities: clinically and without enthusiasm.
Into the Forest: A Thicket of Stupidity
Once the trio heads into Rendlesham Forest, things begin to unravel — mostly the plot. They spot dead horses by the road, a clear sign that something sinister is going on. But instead of calling the police or turning around, they do what all found footage idiots do best: press on, camera rolling, common sense off.
As they tramp deeper into the woods, strange lights appear, accompanied by sounds that could either be alien spacecraft or someone burping into a kazoo. Gus insists it’s the Ministry of Defence testing drones. Sally insists it’s something “out of this world.” The audience insists it’s time to check their phones.
The dialogue feels improvised in the worst way — the kind where the director says, “Just keep talking until we hit 90 minutes.” Most of it sounds like:
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should keep filming.”
By the fifteenth round of this, you’ll wish the aliens would abduct you.
Found Footage Fatigue: ShakyCam to the Face
Found footage works when it feels real — when the camera captures panic, chaos, and that visceral sense of “oh no, this shouldn’t be happening.” But The Rendlesham UFO Incident mistakes realism for monotony.
Every scene looks like it was filmed by someone perpetually tripping over a tree root. The camera shakes so violently you could mistake it for an audition tape for The Blair Witch Project: Vertigo Edition.
At one point, the trio discovers a creepy shack with surveillance photos of themselves inside. It’s an eerie moment — or it would be if the cameraman didn’t immediately start spinning in circles like a toddler on a sugar high.
And when the big “scary” moments come — glowing lights, distorted radio static, mysterious military aircraft — the film treats them like background noise. It’s less Close Encounters and more Mildly Curious Encounters of the Forgettable Kind.
The Characters: The Real Aliens Are the Actors
Let’s talk about our intrepid explorers:
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Gus (Robert Curtis): A man whose entire personality revolves around metal detecting. If Indiana Jones were a substitute teacher with social anxiety, you’d get Gus. He spends half the movie muttering about trespassing laws and the other half getting lost.
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Sally (Abbie Salt): The girlfriend torn between two men who both seem allergic to charisma. She screams occasionally and mostly exists so the camera can focus on her worried face.
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Jake (Danny Shayler): The “videographer,” which is movie code for “guy holding the camera so the director doesn’t have to.” He flirts, films, and finally freaks out, all with the same facial expression.
Watching them argue their way through the forest is like sitting through a group project that no one wants to finish. The aliens don’t even have to abduct them — they could just wait for them to starve out of sheer incompetence.
The “Scares”: Now You See It, Now You Don’t Care
For a movie about extraterrestrial terror, The Rendlesham UFO Incident is remarkably terrified of showing anything extraterrestrial.
There are strange lights in the sky — that’s it. For about 80% of the runtime, the aliens remain conveniently off-screen, probably out of embarrassment. When we finally get a glimpse of the UFOs near the end, they look like the world’s least convincing screensaver.
The supposed climax — when our heroes stumble upon an abandoned military base and find evidence of experiments — could have been thrilling. Instead, it’s shot like a poorly lit warehouse tour. Gus shows up dead, Sally screams, and Jake ascends into the sky like a discount Close Encounters extra.
The movie ends with a white flash, leaving audiences to ponder the ultimate mystery: how something with aliens, death, and government conspiracies could be this boring.
The Real Horror: 90 Minutes of Nothing
To be fair, found footage movies are hard to pull off. The genre thrives on suggestion — on the idea that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do. But The Rendlesham UFO Incident takes that principle to absurd extremes by showing nothing interesting for 90 minutes.
It’s not that the concept lacks potential. The real Rendlesham UFO case is fascinating — a Cold War-era mystery full of credible witnesses and eerie details. In the hands of a better filmmaker, it could have been The X-Files meets The Descent. Instead, it’s Camping Trip from Hell: The Home Movie.
Even the sound design — crucial for found footage horror — feels lazy. Random whooshes, distorted voices, and the occasional “bzzzzt” do not suspense make. By the halfway mark, you’ll be praying for an alien probe just to spice things up.
Final Verdict
⭐☆☆☆☆ — One UFO out of five (Unwatchable, Forgettable, Overlong).
The Rendlesham UFO Incident is less a movie and more a public service announcement about why you should never go camping with people who own GoPros. It takes a legendary UFO mystery and somehow turns it into a feature-length nap.
The scariest thing about this film isn’t the aliens, or the lights, or the idea of government cover-ups — it’s realizing that someone, somewhere, thought this was ready for release.
If you’re looking for a film about alien encounters that will chill your spine, try Fire in the Sky. If you’re looking for something to help you fall asleep faster than a tractor beam, The Rendlesham UFO Incident is your new best friend.
Just remember: in space, no one can hear you scream.
In Rendlesham Forest, no one can hear you care.
