The setup of "The Wicksboro Incident" is quite good. An old guy, supposedly an electrical engineer who in the 1950s worked on a secret government project hidden away in a bunker, in the small town of Wicksboro Texas. His story is that he is the sole survivor of a government cover-up and that Wicksboro vanished after he fled. The return to Wicksboro by the old man and two documentary filmmakers reveals that there is no evidence remaining, and the entire town, along with the clandestine project is gone. Eventually a startling discovery is made. Using divining rods they locate and uncover the old underground laboratory. It is at this point that the wheels come off, and the story degenerates into nonsense, most of it with a hand held camera at night. The first half would make an interesting episode of the History Channel's "U.F.O. Hunters", the second half will do nothing more than induce headaches. - MERK
13 Reviews
Not good enough to be remembered
deloudelouvain31 May 2016
I had absolutely no clue whatsoever what to expect before watching The Wicksboro Incident. I didn't read anything about it so I started watching it without being influenced by reviews or anything. The first half hour I was wondering if it was a documentary or a fictional movie. You could say that that is not bad because the acting was believable. It's only when the old dude started searching the shelter in the desert with a coat hanger that I was for 100% sure it was just a fictional movie. From that point on it got way less interesting, with some stupid turns in the story. Nothing much believable anymore, and so also more boring. I have to admit that there was a bit of suspense as well but the story was just not strong enough to make it good. And then the handy-cam filming, it will always be something I dislike. I don't get why they continue making movies like that because it really doesn't bring anything more besides being annoying.
A big disappointment.
igoratsalad1 March 2015
Not that I expected much of this movie anyways, by looking at the upper half of the poster we can already expect a low budget, "amateurish" kind of movie. The market is saturated with hand-held camera filmed "documentaries", and since these kind of movies are easier to make, there's a whole lot of garbage out there. Unfortunately (or not) for me, I sometimes come across a really impressive title so I am constantly digging out for more. And since I'm also I am a fan of aliens and alien theories, this one got my attention. It's always a gamble though, since the majority of these titles are obscure and you can never be sure if they will be good or not. This one did not fit the bill at all. The only good thing about this movie was the acting, better than I expected. But the movie is simply boring and not worth the time spent watching. The storyline is only original if you haven't heard anything alien-related. I mean, really, anything. If you lived in a hole for the last 70 years, watch it. Otherwise, not recommended.
Would have been brilliant--10 years ago
curtis-821 June 2004
"The Wicksboro Incident" might have been a small sensation had it been released a decade ago, before "The Blair Witch Project." Then again, maybe not. For one thing, "Wicksboro" wouldn't have existed if not for "Blair Witch," seeing as how it is a blatant rip-off--the same faux documentary homemade style, same basic story with UFO's tossed in, even some virtually identical scenes. But Wicks doesn't carry the gimmick to any kind of surprising, or even logical conclusion, and lacks the "this really happened and we found this footage buried in a hole in the ground" thing that made its predecessor so compelling. (I won't spoil the ending for you, but let's just say that where "Blair" had an eerily ambiguous ending, Wicks barely has one at all). And it doesn't help that there's only 30 or 40 minutes worth of material to fill its 90 minute length--a lot of repetition and worthless footage that any real documentarian would have edited out, further killing the illusion of reality.
Maybe if you've never seen Blair, you'll like Wicks to some degree--if you have a remote with a greased fast forward button.
Maybe if you've never seen Blair, you'll like Wicks to some degree--if you have a remote with a greased fast forward button.
Interesting premise, boring execution
trancejeremy1 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
This is a pseudo-documentary, that is a movie designed to look like a documentary. It's hard not to compare it to the Blair Witch Project (since they borrowed the style from it), but it probably owes more to John Carpenter's "They Live", in terms of plot than anything else.
Basically it starts off telling the tale of a guy who claim to have been a scientist in the 1950s. It seems he worked on an early version of the microwave oven, but for reasons unknown, he and his fellow scientists played with it so it would pick up brain waves. And they noticed that they would occasionally get strange readings.
And of course, the only obvious conclusion they could jump to is that they were actually aliens, not people, causing the strange readings.
So he claims that he and his scientist buddies were transferred to a small town in Texas (Wicksboro). Then everyone mysteriously vanished. And he fled and changed his name. But 40 years later he came forward. But the only people who were interested were these 2 guys, would be film makers.
So these 2 indie filmmakers start investigating his claims. Which basically consists of just going to the library, then going to Texas on a road-trip to actually look for the town. They find it, but run into the aliens (in human guise, of course) and the rest of the movie (the bulk of it) is fleeing from them.
Part of the trouble with it is that it's just not particularly creepy. It would have been a lot better to have borrowed some stuff from actual UFO folklore, rather than just a re-tread of "They Live". There's no shortage of things they could have borrowed from.
There should have been far more on the actual investigation, I think. Just going to a library wasn't much.
I also think the premise is pretty silly. I mean, I am into UFOs and often go to talks and seminars by strange people who give lectures and have slide shows about supposedly hidden bases and conspiracies and stuff. If there was one that was real, no would could tell the difference from the dozens of other supposedly real conspiracies. Heck, Netflix has a whole section on supposedly real alien conspiracies.
Lastly, it's supposed to be a documentary, but clearly it's a finished one. It's got lots of stuff that would have been put in last. Like dramatic music while the guy is running around in the dark. Or in the ending, it briefly cuts to a still photo of a guy earlier in a film, who the guy at the end mentions. (Which also was a great way to destroy any tension that was building up.) Stuff like that generally gets done last in a movie. Even if it was supposed to be added just after the footage was shot, I don't see how the cut away to the still photo could have been added at the end, plausibly. So it just makes little sense.
All in all, a really pointless movie. Would have been better if it was just a Blair Witch rip off. Though the acting is somewhat better.
Basically it starts off telling the tale of a guy who claim to have been a scientist in the 1950s. It seems he worked on an early version of the microwave oven, but for reasons unknown, he and his fellow scientists played with it so it would pick up brain waves. And they noticed that they would occasionally get strange readings.
And of course, the only obvious conclusion they could jump to is that they were actually aliens, not people, causing the strange readings.
So he claims that he and his scientist buddies were transferred to a small town in Texas (Wicksboro). Then everyone mysteriously vanished. And he fled and changed his name. But 40 years later he came forward. But the only people who were interested were these 2 guys, would be film makers.
So these 2 indie filmmakers start investigating his claims. Which basically consists of just going to the library, then going to Texas on a road-trip to actually look for the town. They find it, but run into the aliens (in human guise, of course) and the rest of the movie (the bulk of it) is fleeing from them.
Part of the trouble with it is that it's just not particularly creepy. It would have been a lot better to have borrowed some stuff from actual UFO folklore, rather than just a re-tread of "They Live". There's no shortage of things they could have borrowed from.
There should have been far more on the actual investigation, I think. Just going to a library wasn't much.
I also think the premise is pretty silly. I mean, I am into UFOs and often go to talks and seminars by strange people who give lectures and have slide shows about supposedly hidden bases and conspiracies and stuff. If there was one that was real, no would could tell the difference from the dozens of other supposedly real conspiracies. Heck, Netflix has a whole section on supposedly real alien conspiracies.
Lastly, it's supposed to be a documentary, but clearly it's a finished one. It's got lots of stuff that would have been put in last. Like dramatic music while the guy is running around in the dark. Or in the ending, it briefly cuts to a still photo of a guy earlier in a film, who the guy at the end mentions. (Which also was a great way to destroy any tension that was building up.) Stuff like that generally gets done last in a movie. Even if it was supposed to be added just after the footage was shot, I don't see how the cut away to the still photo could have been added at the end, plausibly. So it just makes little sense.
All in all, a really pointless movie. Would have been better if it was just a Blair Witch rip off. Though the acting is somewhat better.
Hand held video rubbish
MBunge29 April 2010
Warning: Spoilers
In the years since it took the internet and America by storm, it's become somewhat fashionable to bash The Blair Witch Project. I'm not sure if it's anger from people who were actually fooled by it, the backlash that happens to anything that ascends from geek/nerd niche entertainment to mainstream acclaim or maybe folks were just soured by that horrible, horrible sequel. But it's fairly common for The Blair Witch Project to get belittled now, as though it was never any good in the first place. Well, anyone who does that should be forced to watch The Wicksboro Incident, because it will remind them of how good The Blair Witch Project really was.
Another pseudo-documentary shot with hand held video cameras, The Wicksboro Incident contains almost every flaw typical to its genre. It also demonstrates how much visceral power this style of storytelling can have. And it's one of the few hand held video movies that won't give you motion sickness.
The film starts out in 1998 Los Angeles with an old man being interviewed in what looks like a seedy motel room from the 1960s. Lloyd (Bobby Harnell) is telling the story of how he and some other guys who were working on a project back in the 1950s to improve the "radar range" managed to invent a device that could receive brain waves. As he tells his story, these black and white images and intercut with Lloyd's narration, like one of those shows on The History Channel or something. Lloyd and the other guys get scooped up by the government and put to work doing something undefined with the device at a tiny Texas town called Wicksboro. One day, while Lloyd is working on the device, he discovers everyone else in the town has disappeared without a trace.
That sent Lloyd into hiding, though it's not exactly clear why that seemed like a good idea to him at the time, until he somehow hooked up with two guys making a documentary about UFOs. Their names are Mike (Dan Brinkle) and Gary (Kyle Nudo). Mike has a wife and kid. Gary has a dad living somewhere else. We never really find out another darn thing about these guys. Why they're making a documentary, why it's about UFOs, how and why they decided to get involved with Lloyd these are questions the film never answers or seemingly ever thinks about.
Anyway, after hearing Lloyd's theories about aliens infiltrating the planet and seeing him show off his alien detection device, Gary and Mike decide to go with Lloyd to the town of Wicksboro. Why they think that's a good idea is never made clear. But even though they can't find the town on any map of Texas, they all pile in a car and go looking for it. I'm just going to sketch out the rest of the plot, because if you make it this far through this movie without dying of boredom, you deserve to appreciate the very, very few surprises that happen in the rest of the story. Anyway, our three heroes head to Texas, become the targets of the least competent and cheapest conspiracy you can imagine, terrible things happen to two of heroes and the last is left to try and escape with the camera and tapes that don't actually prove anything except that Lloyd, Gary and Mike aren't that bright.
Let me note that there are two good things about this movie. There is one genuinely shocking scene, though its startle factor may be enhanced by how unrelentingly dull the rest of the film is, and when the movie is down to just one guy running around with a hand held video camera while the sound track plays scary music, it generates some cheap dramatic tension. It completely shatters the suspension of disbelief to have scary music playing on the soundtrack of what is supposed to be real video of actual events, so I suppose The Wicksboro Incident is most compelling when it's as stupid and cheesy as it can get.
As for the bad, let me count the ways. This film is boring, with long stretches of nothing punctuated by events that don't make much sense. These characters never really discover any secret or uncover any hidden truth or film anything they shouldn't see. The dialog is flat. The acting is mediocre at best. The story has no focus, starting out as a supposed documentary about Lloyd and then turning into a "running through the wilderness with a camera" story that's mainly about Gary and Mike, who are never anything more than ciphers. And there's really no point to this movie being shot with hand held video, except it was simply the cheapest way for them to make this film. Oh, and apparently these filmmakers got almost to the end of their production before they realized they didn't actually have an ending for their movie. So, they blatantly rip off the confessional scene from The Blair Witch Project and fade to black.
Let me conclude by saying about The Wicksboro Incident what I've said about other "real video" movies. Before you watch this, make sure and rent a film called Video X. That movie is both entertaining and an outstanding example of "real video" film-making, two things I cannot say about this film.
Another pseudo-documentary shot with hand held video cameras, The Wicksboro Incident contains almost every flaw typical to its genre. It also demonstrates how much visceral power this style of storytelling can have. And it's one of the few hand held video movies that won't give you motion sickness.
The film starts out in 1998 Los Angeles with an old man being interviewed in what looks like a seedy motel room from the 1960s. Lloyd (Bobby Harnell) is telling the story of how he and some other guys who were working on a project back in the 1950s to improve the "radar range" managed to invent a device that could receive brain waves. As he tells his story, these black and white images and intercut with Lloyd's narration, like one of those shows on The History Channel or something. Lloyd and the other guys get scooped up by the government and put to work doing something undefined with the device at a tiny Texas town called Wicksboro. One day, while Lloyd is working on the device, he discovers everyone else in the town has disappeared without a trace.
That sent Lloyd into hiding, though it's not exactly clear why that seemed like a good idea to him at the time, until he somehow hooked up with two guys making a documentary about UFOs. Their names are Mike (Dan Brinkle) and Gary (Kyle Nudo). Mike has a wife and kid. Gary has a dad living somewhere else. We never really find out another darn thing about these guys. Why they're making a documentary, why it's about UFOs, how and why they decided to get involved with Lloyd these are questions the film never answers or seemingly ever thinks about.
Anyway, after hearing Lloyd's theories about aliens infiltrating the planet and seeing him show off his alien detection device, Gary and Mike decide to go with Lloyd to the town of Wicksboro. Why they think that's a good idea is never made clear. But even though they can't find the town on any map of Texas, they all pile in a car and go looking for it. I'm just going to sketch out the rest of the plot, because if you make it this far through this movie without dying of boredom, you deserve to appreciate the very, very few surprises that happen in the rest of the story. Anyway, our three heroes head to Texas, become the targets of the least competent and cheapest conspiracy you can imagine, terrible things happen to two of heroes and the last is left to try and escape with the camera and tapes that don't actually prove anything except that Lloyd, Gary and Mike aren't that bright.
Let me note that there are two good things about this movie. There is one genuinely shocking scene, though its startle factor may be enhanced by how unrelentingly dull the rest of the film is, and when the movie is down to just one guy running around with a hand held video camera while the sound track plays scary music, it generates some cheap dramatic tension. It completely shatters the suspension of disbelief to have scary music playing on the soundtrack of what is supposed to be real video of actual events, so I suppose The Wicksboro Incident is most compelling when it's as stupid and cheesy as it can get.
As for the bad, let me count the ways. This film is boring, with long stretches of nothing punctuated by events that don't make much sense. These characters never really discover any secret or uncover any hidden truth or film anything they shouldn't see. The dialog is flat. The acting is mediocre at best. The story has no focus, starting out as a supposed documentary about Lloyd and then turning into a "running through the wilderness with a camera" story that's mainly about Gary and Mike, who are never anything more than ciphers. And there's really no point to this movie being shot with hand held video, except it was simply the cheapest way for them to make this film. Oh, and apparently these filmmakers got almost to the end of their production before they realized they didn't actually have an ending for their movie. So, they blatantly rip off the confessional scene from The Blair Witch Project and fade to black.
Let me conclude by saying about The Wicksboro Incident what I've said about other "real video" movies. Before you watch this, make sure and rent a film called Video X. That movie is both entertaining and an outstanding example of "real video" film-making, two things I cannot say about this film.
More than I had expected
danielerusha16 November 2009
Anytime you watch a movie like this, you have either seriously forgive its flaws, in this case an ultra low budget and some serious borrowing from Blair Witch Project, and suspend your disbelief, or you just simply pick it apart. In this case, I chose the former and really enjoyed it. It did have some serious flaws and you have to REALLY give yourself over to the whole "conspiracy theory" ideology to make the movie work. In its favor it has great pacing and, unlike some commenter, the second act was fairly strong with a 100-yard dash like pace and great tension build up.
Overall, though, this movie did keep me on edge and my heart rate accelerated. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to people who enjoy the US Government/Alien conspiracy genre.
Overall, though, this movie did keep me on edge and my heart rate accelerated. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to people who enjoy the US Government/Alien conspiracy genre.
a lot better than Hollywoods latest offerings
wandering-mind11 November 2008
im sorry but this is way better than crap like 13 ghosts,freddy vs jason or any of the Texas chainsaw massacre prequel/sequels, i admit the ending was a bit lame but so was Blair Witch and i still enjoyed that.
I applaud the film-makers as at least it was an original idea compared to Hollywoods habit of hiring hacks to re-ruin great horror movies of the 60's & 70's, i mean seriously what is peoples problem with this film? just because it is laden with CGI special effects a lot of the viewing public seem to switch off but i still rate this much better, these guys did a great job for next to no money and the acting wasn't that bad either. well worth a look in my opinion
I applaud the film-makers as at least it was an original idea compared to Hollywoods habit of hiring hacks to re-ruin great horror movies of the 60's & 70's, i mean seriously what is peoples problem with this film? just because it is laden with CGI special effects a lot of the viewing public seem to switch off but i still rate this much better, these guys did a great job for next to no money and the acting wasn't that bad either. well worth a look in my opinion
Watch in entirety!
jertea24 August 2007
This documentary starts out odd, and seems very suspicious at first glance. It has to be watched in it's entirety from beginning to end before anyone has the right to place judgement. Fast forwarding is a sign of being narrow minded.
A strong understanding of Area 51, and other related government cover-up theories makes this documentary one to watch to the end. Are they here among us? With the chaos, and very confusing times we are facing today, it is quite possible.
The world is supposed to be "more highly educated" everyday, yet we are still seemingly slipping backwards at an alarming rate! Why? Jeremy
A strong understanding of Area 51, and other related government cover-up theories makes this documentary one to watch to the end. Are they here among us? With the chaos, and very confusing times we are facing today, it is quite possible.
The world is supposed to be "more highly educated" everyday, yet we are still seemingly slipping backwards at an alarming rate! Why? Jeremy
I liked this movie myself
billclintonsuks129 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
i just seemed under the impression that this is a true story...Lloyd in this film is either telling the truth or hes a better actor than I've ever seen....what troubles me is the scene that Lloyd is killed...what hit him in the head?......the other issue that troubles me is when they sell the camry....not many people i know carry their car title with them to be able to make a fast exchange like that...the device isn't all up to par either...I'm sure many know more than me on the subject but why the flashing leds in the clear bubble other than for looks?....so is this just a movie or is it really a documentary? if anyone has any thoughts on this please comment here or preferably email me at the address provided...I'm one of those that have to know the truth and don't trust our government with anything lol.
Boring, dull, stupid and pointless.
dawziecat28 September 2005
This movie is nothing short of pathetic. It has a boring, drawn out, inscrutable beginning that makes it hard to bother continuing to watch it at all.
I suppose it is someone's idea of cinema verité. It has all the amateurish production values of The Blair Witch Project but with none of the suspense.
There is no ending to speak of at all . . . yet I was glad to see it end. Truth is, being a die-hard, I set my DVD player at 1.5X speed about half way through . . . just to see my evening of pain end all the more quickly.
A complete waste of time.
Who makes this stuff?
I suppose it is someone's idea of cinema verité. It has all the amateurish production values of The Blair Witch Project but with none of the suspense.
There is no ending to speak of at all . . . yet I was glad to see it end. Truth is, being a die-hard, I set my DVD player at 1.5X speed about half way through . . . just to see my evening of pain end all the more quickly.
A complete waste of time.
Who makes this stuff?
Quite good
mark-534943 June 2020
The film started off really slow and meeting up with a guy to tell us his story at first he gave the impression he was crazy about aliens driving all over the place and using the thing he made up. But when they started getting followed and had to change cars it got better and when he did manage to persuade them to go out and look for the shelter on the night they still thought he was crazy untill they did find it that's when they took him serious u won't say anymore than that you have got to sit and watch it no matter how bored you get it also proves the USA cover up what we are not suppose to see even at all costs life or death
Pitting an elephant against an ant is boring entertainment.
fedor811 December 2019
Warning: Spoilers
First let me tell you that this only minimally qualifies as a horror film.
An ultra-low-budget found-in-sewage "thriller" about an alien conspiracy so huge and absurd that it renders the plot pointless before it even starts unfolding. After all, if the aliens had already started infiltrating society 60 years earlier - to the extent whereby they can wipe out an entire town without having to explain themselves to anyone - and are by now controlling the FBI, corporations, and all the world's governments, AND have moon-bases, AND are telepaths too boot, then what bloody chance in hell do three puny humans have against them? It's the old elephant vs. ant story: a foregone conclusion doesn't create suspenseful story-telling. It's simply impossible to tell the elephant vs. ant story in a way that is exciting and unpredictable when the outcome is obvious.
Hence why I submitted this review as having spoilers, because those are the rules. Essentially there are no spoilers here. You know what you're getting already in the first 5 minutes. It's impossible to spoil an already spoiled film.
To make things even more predictable (if that's even possible given this premise), the movie is filmed as found-footage which means that we ANYWAY know from the get-go that nobody survived and that the aliens won. Movies with such a doomed starting premise, that the bad guys win, can only work if it offers something else to the viewer, something visual: an atmosphere, stylized violence - anything. But it's just a shoddy home-made camcorder flick so obviously we can rule that out too, which predictable turns out to be the case. There are literally no special effects at all, no flash, just people running away with wobbly cameras. You could film 90% of these scenes yourself.
The only mildly positive things: the cheese factor (the intro is like watching an episode of "Ancient Aliens"), the device that detects aliens (sort of cute), and the desert setting. Otherwise, it's just three guys running away from aliens (i.e. humans because they're body-snatchers i.e. a great way of saving money on special effects and costumes): and that's literally what the entire second half is about. They run away and get predictably bumped off one by one. The end. Aliens win.
Yes, we kinda knew that from the start, movie.
The last 20 minutes is basically boring night-time camcorder footage that leaves the viewer wondering when they're gonna turn on the lights. Very unexciting and lame.
The body-snatching shtick had been a big cliche already by the time 60s "Star Trek" dabbled in it (over and over), and by the time this little flick was filmed it had been so sucked dry that, honestly, what's the frigging point? "They Live" this ain't: that's how you do a movie about body-snatchers and alien conspiracy. But that had a budget, it was a movie, it had a story. I am not quite sure we can call these straight-to-video found-in-sewage thingies actually motion pictures. They're almost like home-made thrillers.
An ultra-low-budget found-in-sewage "thriller" about an alien conspiracy so huge and absurd that it renders the plot pointless before it even starts unfolding. After all, if the aliens had already started infiltrating society 60 years earlier - to the extent whereby they can wipe out an entire town without having to explain themselves to anyone - and are by now controlling the FBI, corporations, and all the world's governments, AND have moon-bases, AND are telepaths too boot, then what bloody chance in hell do three puny humans have against them? It's the old elephant vs. ant story: a foregone conclusion doesn't create suspenseful story-telling. It's simply impossible to tell the elephant vs. ant story in a way that is exciting and unpredictable when the outcome is obvious.
Hence why I submitted this review as having spoilers, because those are the rules. Essentially there are no spoilers here. You know what you're getting already in the first 5 minutes. It's impossible to spoil an already spoiled film.
To make things even more predictable (if that's even possible given this premise), the movie is filmed as found-footage which means that we ANYWAY know from the get-go that nobody survived and that the aliens won. Movies with such a doomed starting premise, that the bad guys win, can only work if it offers something else to the viewer, something visual: an atmosphere, stylized violence - anything. But it's just a shoddy home-made camcorder flick so obviously we can rule that out too, which predictable turns out to be the case. There are literally no special effects at all, no flash, just people running away with wobbly cameras. You could film 90% of these scenes yourself.
The only mildly positive things: the cheese factor (the intro is like watching an episode of "Ancient Aliens"), the device that detects aliens (sort of cute), and the desert setting. Otherwise, it's just three guys running away from aliens (i.e. humans because they're body-snatchers i.e. a great way of saving money on special effects and costumes): and that's literally what the entire second half is about. They run away and get predictably bumped off one by one. The end. Aliens win.
Yes, we kinda knew that from the start, movie.
The last 20 minutes is basically boring night-time camcorder footage that leaves the viewer wondering when they're gonna turn on the lights. Very unexciting and lame.
The body-snatching shtick had been a big cliche already by the time 60s "Star Trek" dabbled in it (over and over), and by the time this little flick was filmed it had been so sucked dry that, honestly, what's the frigging point? "They Live" this ain't: that's how you do a movie about body-snatchers and alien conspiracy. But that had a budget, it was a movie, it had a story. I am not quite sure we can call these straight-to-video found-in-sewage thingies actually motion pictures. They're almost like home-made thrillers.
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