Simon Ryninks's debut feature, Out There, is a likably daft but big-hearted YA comedy drama inspired by West Wales's reputation as a hotspot for UFO sightings, particularly Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire, where many people in 1977 reported close encounters. Set in the fictionalised Welsh town of Caradoc in 1999, the film captures a world of smoking in pubs, dot-matrix computer printouts, Sony Handicam video cameras, and droll references to the New Labour government.
A Teenager's Alien Obsession
Maz (Nerys Amber Stocks) is a teenager studying for A-levels, haunted by the death of her father five years earlier. A scientist at a top secret Ministry of Defence base, he was killed in a mysterious incident involving a flash of white light from above. As a child, Maz had cheekily smuggled herself into the base in the back of his car and witnessed the event, but now can't quite remember the details. The film leaves it open whether this is PTSD or alien memory wiping.
Convinced her dad wasn't killed but abducted by aliens, Maz is obsessed with seeing him again. She devises a plan to break into the heavily guarded base, enlisting her loyal but nervous best mate Elis (Tom Maya) and gibbering local ufologist Bryn (Aneurin Barnard).
New Age Help and Hypnotherapy
For help understanding the cosmos and opening the doors of perception, they turn to Shifty Gruff (Michael Sheen), a new age shop owner and drug enthusiast who supplies shrooms to local youth. Caradoc's own Howard Marks, Gruff offers hypnotherapy to Maz to unlock memories and visions. When Elis asks suspiciously, "Have you done regression therapy before?", Gruff replies smoothly, "I have in a past life …". When his hypnosis unexpectedly succeeds, Gruff becomes very excited, and Elis warns him, "With great ability comes great …", to which Gruff interrupts, "Commercial opportunity!"
Melancholy Beneath the Shenanigans
Amid the extraterrestrial antics, the film finds room for melancholy reflection that UFO belief is often an inability to accept death, that this life on Earth is all there is. Ryninks delivers entertaining material, though the reviewer noted disappointment that the excellent Kimberley Nixon didn't have a bigger role. The film could spin off nicely as a TV series.
Out There screened at the Edinburgh film festival.
