There is no thought more powerful and paralysing to my anxiety addled brain than ‘what if?’ In my adult life this can take on a whole load of monstrous variations from some of the most deranged and disturbing ideations to every time I sit down in the cinema, without fail, wondering if I’ve forgotten to lock the door or left the cooker on. It’s almost easier for me to have something tangible to worry about, one problem to ponder, rather than having to endure my brain going through the process of selecting something from a myriad of horrible, likely self invented, scenarios as if it were picking something from Netflix to pass a few hours on a Tuesday evening. I mean, even in that scenario, the dreaded ‘what if?’ can become a problem as the weight of picking the wrong thing gets blown way out of proportion, feeling like an existential crisis rather than a wasted forty minutes before whatever true crime documentary or straight to streaming movie I’ve stuck on is abandoned in favour of Peep Show or Seinfeld being fired up for a thousandth time. It’s fair to say ‘what if?’ has hung pretty heavily over my adult life but prior to this, in my pre-teen years, this often debilitating question was reserved for something less extremely irrational and more extraterrestrial.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day set for release in the coming days, I pushed aside my excitement for this film and thought back to my relationship with all things alien and UFO related growing up and it has to be said for a certain period of time there was one overriding emotion: terror. Horror TV shows were very much my bag when I was growing up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spin-off Angel leading the charge (special shout out to The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror also for diluting the plots of horror movies I couldn’t see into five minute cartoon segments) but they very rarely frightened me. I put this down to me having lived on planet Earth (although mostly just one small Scottish town) and having never encountered any of these creatures, I didn’t really feel the need to be frightened of them. Plus, the television had taught me that, most of the time, a few teenagers were able to handle the various demonic forces they were faced with and I’d done two years of karate so I’d probably be fine. However, when it came to things not from this planet, fiction too easily had the potential to blur into reality. No one could tell me for sure that aliens didn’t exist and and that led me squarely to the feet of ‘what if?’ So, for no other reason than in hind sight it’s probably quite funny, let’s play the hits and go over a couple of times I was shaken to my core by the portrayal of intergalactic visitors in cinema.
I was very much a Star Wars kid growing up but it goes without saying that the various iterations of alien in those movies did little to frighten me. There was one occasion where my Jar-Jar Binks wristwatch, abandoned at the bottom of a drawer (too annoying for even a ten year old) malfunctioned late one evening which led to my terrified younger brother traipsing down the stairs claiming our bedroom was haunted but otherwise the household remained unscathed by George Lucas. There was a revelation that my cousin, who’s older brothers were taken by my pregnant aunt to see Spielberg’s own E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, was named Elliot after the lead character but the scariest part of that story was hearing of the teasing he received when this story did the rounds at his school. I remember sitting in the same cousin’s bedroom, looking at his action figures from the Alien series and flicking through a novelisation of the trilogy but these only fascinated rather than frightened me. No, the first time I can remember being horrified by a vision of the other-worldly came in the side room of a community hall, where me and a few of my peers were stuck in front of an old TV and VHS player with a copy of the newly released Independence Day.
I recently rewatched the film and despite being far from scared this time around, I can understand how the blockbuster hooked me in before disturbing me to the point that I had to stop watching. It’s fast paced, cutting between a vast array of characters in the early stages to build up its narrative and is incredibly watchable in that 90’s big budget film way and when Will Smith enters the film, he is absolutely the cool and quotable hero that is like sherbet to the ten year old brain. Watching it now, I was struck by just how much stuff the film throws at the wall, with it being part political thriller and part Top Gun and Star Wars hybrid with an unbelievably good looking cast led by Jeff Goldblum who pretty much revamps his role from Jurassic Park. There is also a heavy dose of American propaganda which now, in the age of MAGA, is probably the scariest part. However the scariest bit on my first viewing came about halfway through the film when during an alien autopsy being conducted at the mysterious Area 51 military base, one of the tentacled beings suddenly roars into action, killing several fleeing scientists before grabbing another by the neck. We shift to outside the room, looking through the glass screen which now shows the operating theatre to be filled with mist, before the captured scientist is thrust against the glass and utters the words ‘release me’. Luckily the military personnel aren’t duped as soon after the alien being reveals himself, showing he has the poor Area 51 employee by the next and is using him to speak. The scene concludes in the most chest-beating AMERICA fashion as it is realised that the glass isn’t bulletproof and they are able to deal with their new foe in their favourite way, relentless gun fire. Scene over, day saved. Sadly for me, I had been traumatised. For days I could not get the scene out of my head, haunted by what I’d seen at Area 51 and with no idea on how to alleviate my fears. A few days later I found a copy of the film in my house and begged my mum to let me watch it again, assuring her that I wouldn’t be as scared a second time around and that facing it may even help me get over it. Wrong. Again, I enjoyed the first half of the film, Will Smith was my new hero and I was sure that if I ever came into contact with an alien I would also punch it in the face and deliver a one liner. That was, until I stared again through the glass and into the mist and once again (metaphorically) shit myself. Tears and several sleepless nights followed and the Independence Day VHS was taken from the communal living room shelf and hidden away where it couldn’t cause any more damage.
A couple of years later on a Saturday evening, I assured my dad that the days of cinematic extraterrestrials sending me into a tailspin were long gone and we rented M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. In the eerie early stages, I was able to lie to myself and pretend I was coping as M. Night gave us brief glimpses of what MIGHT be an alien life form but as the tension began to build I could feel the fear building. By the time we got to the infamous scene of Joaquin Phoenix sitting in the cupboard watching footage of a child’s birthday party in Brazil, we were ready to get meta and as the alien stepped out from behind a car and Joaquin leaped back shrieking in terror, I too found myself physically recoiling from the television. There was a brief moment of levity when my dad, mocking both me and the film, went to the kitchen and made a hat out of tinfoil to replicate the on screen attempts at avoiding alien mind control but it wasn’t enough to bring me back down to Earth. There was to be an extended conversation at bedtime about the endless possibilities of the universe before my dad, now irate at both my cowardice and probably his own foolish choice of video rental proclaimed ‘I won’t believe in aliens until I see E.T walking down the High Street’ and left, shutting the door on me to now lie awake alone, terrorised by the possibility of alien invasion and slightly depressed at my father’s lack of imagination.
After this both me and my parents had learned our lessons and there were no further incidents of alien invoked horror, well except from one new years eve where, probably aided by the whisky he’d consumed, I was able to convince my dad to let me watch The X-Files with the other kids at the party we were at. I’m unsure if we were just too young or if it was one of the really boring episodes in the later seasons but it was swiftly turned off in favour of South Park, which I’m almost certain I wasn’t supposed to be seeing.
I’m fairly certain that Disclosure Day won’t have a similar effect on me and that my dread will unfortunately remain existential for the foreseeable future. I’m almost envious of the young boy who could so easily lose himself in a fear brought on by a mainstream movie, even if, at the time it was just as paralysing as the churn of anxiety I go through in my adult life. The tag line for DD is ‘YOU DESERVE TO KNOW’ and if Steven Spielberg does in fact reveal the secrets of the universe and alleviate my childhood fears twenty five years on, who knows, maybe in another two decades time I’ll get the chance to chase him down the street and pose some further questions to him to address the horrendous headspace I can find myself in these days. That is, unless I bump into E.T first and finally have the proof needed for my dad to believe.
