Investigation Alien (2024)

Investigation Alien is a riveting examination of alien sitings and the US government coverups designed to supress the evidence, and deliberately or not, discredit the witnesses who’ve had “close encounters”. The key force across the six-episode Netflix series is veteran journalist George Knapp who has been pursuing evidence – witness testimony, military recordings, and even ancient petroglyphs – across a decades-long career.

While the topic of alien or UFO visitations on earth is not exactly new, there are some revelations in this series that surprised even the die-hard alien enthusiastic among us. The 40-minute episodes unfold in different places, from Knapp’s banker box-filled home office in Phoenix to various road trips both inside and outside of the USA. In each place Knapp typically teams up with trusted colleagues with military, espionage, or academic credentials as well as members of the public who have experienced the alien phenomenon first-hand or witnessed the aftermath.

In Oregon, Knapp visits ranchers who have been shocked by a series of mutilated cow carcasses which include, drained blood, dissected jaws, severed snouts, and excised genitalia. Come again? To the ranchers who know their livestock and the animal predators in the region, these killings do not resemble animal attacks. Furthermore, the “melting” fashion in which the animal remains seem to disappear into the earth speaks to a chemical interaction which seems other worldly or at least unknown.

In Brazil, Knapp investigates a collection of luminous alien space ships that started to present themselves to the people of the town of Colares in the 1970’s, only to appear to take samples from locals’ flesh with techniques variously described as piercing and light-based. What’s more, this collection of globular, light-filled entities was seen by many hovering over the water and, get this, descending into it.

Perhaps this is one of the most mind-messing insights in the series, the idea that humans seeking confirmation of alien visitation or presence may be looking in the wrong direction, literally, meaning up into the sky instead of down into the water which comprises 70% of our planet’s surface. As Knapp hypothesizes, what better place to hide? Furthermore, Knapp also posits matter-of-factly, what if the aliens who have been documented as visiting us don’t always fly off into the sky, but instead, sink down into the sea as they’ve been recorded doing in Brazil?

This alien-water phenomenon has been documented in other regions too like Tampico on the eastern coast of Mexico where locals swear that the alien presence is protecting them from a direct hit from hurricanes and Catalina Island off the coast of California where Knapp enlists underwater archaeologist Rory Kremer to look for marine evidence of alien presence.

Knapp also enlists Mike Masters, a Professor of Anthropology at Montana Tech, who offers another rather mind-blowing hypothesis. Using visualization techniques from evolutionary biology to imagine what our descendants will look like in the distant future, Masters asks, what if the “alien” life forms visiting or watching us now are, well, us? What if they are our future selves returned to protect and look after a more ancient manifestation of themselves (us). Protect us from what you ask? Well, what about life altering or earth-killing technologies like nuclear weapons? To that end, the film makes clear that there is abundant, mostly military captured evidence, of alien life forms intervening during nuclear weapons tests across various sites and countries, mainly to disarm weapons prior to launch.

If all this sounds crazy, Knapp also visits Capitol Reef National Park in Utah where his guide floats the idea that ancient indigenous populations may have been recording, not mere fantastical imaginings, but their encounters with alien life forms who may have been visiting for millennia. The petroglyphs, which the group interprets as wearing space suits and helmets, are estimated at between 1000 and 5000 years sold.

Still skeptical? What makes the documentary even more convincing is the fact that the US government, including the Pentagon, seems determined to withhold and hide vital information from the public, to debunk and ridicule witness testimony, and snatch visual recordings while creating what amounts to a PR campaign to sow doubt and dismiss the countless US and international sitings, many by military Air Force and Navy personnel. “Nothing to see here,” they seem to be screaming, even as stories emerge of countless “men in black” showing up to confiscate recordings and evidence at various sitings and crashes. Also suspicious, most US government officials who eventually speak on the record (many of them in the show) do so only after retirement or separation for their employers allowed them to feel safe enough to share their knowledge.

Whether you believe that the aliens are among us or think it’s all a hoax, Investigation Alien is a gripping, well-constructed, evidence-based, journalist-driven exploration of the possibilities of alien visitation, experimentation, collaboration, and habitation that’s certainly worth a watch.