Fire in the Sky is a horror movie that’s masquerading as a biopic. I remember seeing part of the movie on tv back in the day but didn’t watch much because I was a kid and got distracted by something. I also remember seeing the VHS cover in the video store growing up and it always intriguing me but never renting it because there’d always be something that would pique my interest more, I’m looking at you Evil Dead series. Seeing Fire in the Sky now allowed me to get more out of this movie than I would have when I was younger.
Fire in the Sky was directed by Robert Lieberman and adapted by Tracy Tormé from Travis Walton’s book about his experience. Lieberman did an amazing job with this film. While I’ve not read Walton’s book, I feel like Tormé did a fantastic job of adapting the story into a compelling movie. The way the story is laid out so that you start to wonder what’s going on. That is all while setting up a horrific sequence that is the movie’s calling card which was not in the book and a product of the adaptation process.
Robert Patrick puts in a hell of a performance in Fire in the Sky, and I feel like it doesn’t get talked about enough. This movie came out two years after his star making performance in Terminator 2 and this performance showed the range that he has. D.B. Sweeney puts in another outstanding performance in the movie. Sweeney stars as Travis Walton and you see what he experienced during his days missing. The meat of his performance is right after he’s found, and you experience what he went through while he’s trying to recover at home. Peter Berg, Henry Thomas, Craig Sheffer, and Bradley Gregg are great as the rest of the crew that saw what happened. Noble Winningham, James Garner, Kathleen Wilhoite, and Georgia Emelin put in fantastic supporting performances as well.
The effects in this movie are amazing. The early visual effects look surprisingly good almost thirty years later. The practical effects are amazing and make the abduction scenes as horrific as they are. The aliens look terrifying and that’s down the design of them. The music by Mark Isham did an amazing job in the movie. Whenever a scene called for a particular emotion, the score matched that emotion and amplified it at least ten-fold.
Fire in the Sky is a hell of a movie, no matter if you believe the story its based on or not. I can understand why the alien scenes are talked about when it comes to alien-based horror. I don’t think I could have picked a better movie to end my alien encounter week with. I watched the movie on Amazon Prime Video. I give Fire in the Sky 9 snowflake keychains out of 10.