CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FIFTH KIND

Featuring: Steven M. Greer
Narrated by Jeremy Piven.
Writer/director: Michael Mazzola

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Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

So you’re deep into today’s iso-skimming session on your preferred streaming platform and you happen upon Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, the latest speculative-doco from UFO theoretician Steven Greer. You’ll have a look because...y’know, UFO stuff is pretty cool, and much of what makes ‘UFO stuff’ cool is certainly in the mix. Greer’s offsider, filmmaker Micahel Mazzola, has collated all manner of unexplainable points of light glimpsed by shaky-cam; woodlands lit by physics-defying ‘golden orbs’; and, incredulous accounts of bewildered pilots, trying to fathom the black-&-white footage from their cockpit cams.

But Greer, the movement’s opinion-dividing frontman (is he this generation’s Carl Sagan or a new-age P.T. Barnum?), claims to be at such an advanced communicative juncture with beings from beyond that his third feature documentary assumes that they not only walk among us but, if we invite them nicely, they’ll join us around a campfire. This head-first plunge into the maybe-world of extraterrestrial co-existence occasionally hurtles mesmerically into next-level conspiracy theorising, but there is undeniably plenty to mutter “Damn, I knew it!” about for those who want to believe.

The ‘Fifth Kind’ of close encounter (or ‘CE5’) involves the most spiritually enlightened amongst us reaching out with pure thoughts and kindly hearts to the occupants of interplanetary/transdimensional craft and beckoning them to our realm. A combination of Greer’s skill with the anecdote, a bevy of highly-credentialed talking heads and footage of CE5 disciples across the world staring longingly skywards build to a crescendo (and website/app plug) that feels legitimate. Single frames of ‘light beings’ walking amongst remote gatherings of believers and conjecture that these entities travel through portals to appear in our skies instantaneously is fascinating, but non-believers are likely to dig in over such claims.

It is on this point that Greer spins some of the uglier theorising inherent to his point of view. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind posits that Joe Public has been sold a deceptive narrative by a covert government/mainstream news media/entertainment industry cooperative for the last 60 years. Mazzola uses clips from Mars Attacks, Predator, Men in Black and the Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’, to drill home the notion that the images fed to us are meant inspire fear in alien contact. Blame is placed at society’s feet for its blind subjugation to the 'lies' spun to us; an accusatory stance that states, ‘If you believe the establishment, you are part of the problem’. The hard-sell meanness of such an approach will turn the inquisitive away far quicker than harmless pseudo-science and new-agey spiritualism.

Whether he is a channeller of profound consciousness or a pitchman par excellence (most likely, a bit of both), Greer knows how to produce a speculative documentary that takes hold of the viewer and refuses to let go (for a whopping two hours, no less). The craft he and Mazzola employ to keep hearts and minds engaged even while eyeballs are heading backwards is often remarkable. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind won’t make you believe any more than you do, nor will it spin too many sceptics 180°, but it will help us understand the complexity of a different set of beliefs.