User reviews

This was a very decent film and definitely worth watching - the acting was underplayed and there were no stupid special effects - just a good interesting plot and story.

I have no idea if the math was accurate but it seemed quite plausible and the mystery kept me waiting until the end - I almost felt like a math genius just watching it unfold.

The acting and direction was good - the usual aspergers/autistic type math genius that gets to prove his point by solving a really hard problem - made me think that the future of human kind will probably be in the hands of someone like this.

Not the average action packed sci-fi alien squealing fest but very entertaining.

This was certainly no big budget Hollywood blockbuster, but a fairly decent and interesting film that held my attention.

It didn't have any action or thrills, but the rather original concept behind a UFO sighting was enough to keep me well interested.

This is novice director and writer Ryan Eslinger's fourth film installment, and he did a very good job.

The score was a little too obvious throughout the entire film, and pausing it in certain scenes would have created better tension for the viewer. The pacing and length were just right. The C & B grade cast performed fairly well, but I feel Alex Sharp should have not been cast as the lead. Perhaps someone more seasoned would have made this film more appealing. It was however a pleasant surprise to see Gillian Anderson a.k.a X-Files' Scully, and she of course nailed her role.

I can see many people slamming this film, especially if they hate math, and because it's not your typical Hollywood production. Had there been narrating, it would have made for a great documentary type film. This felt more like one of those "based on a true story" films. Nothing spectacular, but still interesting enough to watch and make you think.

Nevertheless, still enjoyable and refreshing to see something different, even if not Hollywood-ish. Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I see it again? Probably not.

Yeah, it's been done before in Close Encounters, sort of, but it's quite a different take. There is a Eureka!! bonding moment between the professor and student about the wavelength of radio signals emitted by hydrogen and it's kind of touching.

It's nice see college students that really seem like college students. Andersen does a very convincing job of a college professor.

One major annoyance is the very last line, when the student is asked what all this means, and he answers "we are not alone." Well, DUH, by this point of the movie. Bad choice there.

Boy, I haven't had chills like this since "Contact".

If you like well written movies, movies that leave you on the edge of your seat from the get-go - this is it!

If you like movies that are INTELLIGENT and push the envelope of interesting and well written, this is your movie!

Acting is superb, writing is superb - and content is mesmerizing.

This movie does what so many big budget films want to do at a fraction of the cost!

Do yourself a favor and watch it. You won't be sorry!

This movie ultimately looks and feels like a pretty good student film, it has a pretty interesting story at it's core, and is made on a low budget, it also has some fine acting in it, but at the end of the day, it delivers little i would call cinema worthy. Now i didn't see it in a cinema, but still, a movie is a movie.

This film kind of feels like an episode of a TV show, in it's editing and it's camera work. It's a movie that is made almost entirely on autopilot it seems, it delivers a formula you have seen hundreds of times before, it delivers very few surprises outside the plot itself which could go anywhere to be honest.

And that is what saves this film, that i didn't know exactly where the main story would take me, and this raised the suspense, so i was never bored watching this, at least not much. But Gillian Anderson and David Strathairn has way too little to work with here, it almost feels like they are in this to either cash in on some easy job, or to maybe support an up and coming director, because they are both fine actors, and in this film, you couldn't tell if you had never seen them before.

It's a decent end of the day film, it keeps your attention for the most part, but it wants to be something more, but there just isn't enough money involved to take it to the next level, so it tries to just stay on the ground, tries to keep things small, though ultimately the story itself is HUGE, so it sort of clashes a bit.

So a decent afternoon flick you can watch while having some food or just feeling bored. Not a bad movie, but nothing special either.

6/10 - Fair

There are many UFO movies made, some serial about and related is probably more known, and we have pleasure to see main actress of it in this movie. She is math professor, and there was little too much time spent on her conflicts with main hero, math genius, rebel, and bad boyfriend :-)

With so much focus on math - we seen some equations, heard how calculated size of that 'object' - what was of course too simplified, but you must do it that way for entertaining movie.. And then something really stupid: "... what's that 38 ? That's binary" - Huh ! Me stupido thought that binary can have only 0-s and 1-s. Maybe meant hexadecimal ? There could be some other mistakes, but I really did not care to follow it carefully.

There was basically nothing original here - usual government coverage, alone hero chasing the truth, who gets some help here and there ...

Very ending was pretty much binary 0 :-)

Acting overall: 5 .

As a physicist and a SciFi fan, I rather enjoyed the movie. It was very approachable in terms of dialog and the science seemed reasonable and accurate. I would highly recommend this if you like a thoughtful SciFi approach to UFOs.

Enjoyed this slow burn which inspite of being so doesn't bore you for a minute and keeps you engaged. Thoughtful, geeky fun.

The summary at the top of the page plainly states, "A college student, who sees a UFO, uses his exceptional math skills to investigate the sighting with his friends while the FBI follows closely behind. "

Well, after watching this painful excuse for science fiction, I can say with 100% certainty that this movie is about a college student who uses math skills to investigate a UFO sighting.

Really, that's all there is to it. Nothing more, nothing less. This movie is not worth it's current 6+ rating. It's a drama, and while the acting isn't second-rate, it doesn't come close to any kind of sci-fi. You could replace the UFO with a sighting of a gnome, goblin, troll, faerie, pixie or Elvis Presley and not a single thing in the movie would change.

If you've got an hour and a half to spare watching this movie, consider going outside to watch the grass grow instead.

Despite its pedestrian title, UFO is a very good science fiction drama which somehow manages to make mathematics suspenseful by virtue of a literate script, taught direction, and very good, sincere acting on everyone's part.

While not conceived on the grand scale of excellent higher-budget concept-driven productions such as Arrival, Annihilation, Interstellar, Ex Machina, and Predestination, UFO nonetheless joins the ranks of these films in what we can probably at this point call a genuine cycle of intelligent sci-fi, which we've been enjoying 4 the last five years or so.

UFO sightings is a trodden path in movies, but in this case they found a way to make a script intriguing enough to arise curiosity from beginning to end

UFO is one of those based on a "True Story" movies about UFO sightings and the efforts the governments goes to cover them up.

It tells the story of one man and his obssession with UFO sightings and his determination to get to the truth of a recent sighting over an airport. A maths major he uses his skills to get to the bottom of it, but the "Powers that be" are onto him.

Starring Gillian "X-Files" Anderson this uses a more subtle approach so don't expect big flashy sfx, little green cgi men or anything in between.

Credit where credit is due this is a legitimately intelligent film but alas doesn't really culminate in what you'd expect. Sure it has a traditional beginning, middle and end but it all feels wafer thin and didn't engage me as much as I would have liked.

One for genre fans only methinks.

The Good:

A very smart movie

The Bad:

Everyone looks so damn tired!

Wafer thin plot

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Things like this make me believe in UFO's even less

Gillian Anderson looks like she's been anal probed

As in my heading, this could have been so much better, not that it's bad though. I see there's certain reviews calling it pretentious. That's just not true. There's a difference between smart or clever and pretentious.

If this was played out more like a faux-documentary style I reckon it would have worked out a lot better though.

It's a definite watch at least once. Give it a go. It's just under 90 mins so it's not too taxing and you might be surprised. One thing though, I really wouldn't recommend it for a sit down with your missus or friends and crack open a beer type scenario. It's just not that type.

6/10

It seems like a simplified Contact with a touch of math perspective.

Worth seeing.

Believe someone that has seen a lot.

And signed to SETI from the beginning, I cannot see it clearly anymore... Well, I didn't reverse engineered the maths involved, so, maybe I'm playing the ingenuity tune... Try and see.

Seven is from a believer.

Maths aren't my strong point, so the plethora of equations and really big numbers were confusing enough to be believable. The conspiracy busting vibe was spot on and the whole thing was thoroughly enjoyable.

I wanted to like this film but there was so little to like. I found it boring, unengaging and self important. Who is that interested in maths anyway? I thought that having Gillian Anderson in a key role would guarantee a decent sci if theme. But no this was a turgid mess of teenage nerd angst and paranoia.

"UFO" definitely went under the radar, no pun intended. I had not heard of the film until browsing the Internet. I was intrigued by the plot description and after watching the film I can say it did not disappoint. First off I was excited to see "UFO" took place in my town of Cincinnati. The story was clearly inspired by the real life events at Chicago O'Hare airport in 2006 where dozens of airport personnel, pilots and passengers witnessed a saucer shaped object hover over the airport before darting up into the sky at an incredible speed. In the movie after a similar event at CVG, Cincinanti's largest airport, both the government and a brilliant math student race to resolve a mysterious binary cipher delivered by a craft that briefly appears over the airport. The story is fascinating and mirrors the aftermath of the Chicago sighting, when the media was quick to label it simply a weather phenomenon but many silenced witnesses were left frustrated with what they know they saw. The director takes a refreshing approach in actually delving into the topic, rather than exploiting and ridiculing it. You won't see any crazy special effects or Amy Adams talk to a genius octopus, just ordinary people trying to make sense of an extraordinary situation. The film has a satisfying ending but you will be left wanting to know more. I highly recommend this film to the UFO enthusiasts and the skeptics alike, as well as those just looking for a smart and interesting SciFi movie without Matthew McConaughey getting stuck in the wall.

Like most who reviewed this, I had never heard of it before watching it. One possibly is this was a bit too close to the truth for "the powers that be" to let this get too much attention by being publicised better.

For me it was interesting, I do like math and I do have an interest in UFOs, being good at math and having had a very very close encounter with a UFO around 20 years ago in a small country town.

Most of the movie made sense to me and I believe that UFOs do visit us regularly and we are not being told everything by "the powers that be".

All of the actors did a good job and I found this movie an entertaining 75 minutes, there being almost 11 minutes of credits.

Open your mind to the possibilities and see.

Really bad film, never got started, you do not see anything other than the main character solving a load of maths jargon, thats 88 minutes of my life I will never get back.

I normally do not watch UFO films because if you see one the rest are pretty much all the same. Something about this one caught my attention. As soon as it started you could tell it wasn't a big budget movie but it also wasn't one of those cheap documentaries on UFO'S. The movie was well done and it keeps your attention throughout the entire movie. I liked that David Strathairn didn't play a bad guy as he does in a lot of his movies. I also don't usually write reviews but I wanted to let whoever reads this an is considering watching this movie based on reviews that is really worth watching. A good story, and a good cast, who could want more in a movie. 👍👍

SO the movie is good,,, filled with thrilling moments .. filled with mathematics and numbers ... but i kinda wished that the UFO appears in a way ..

The screenplay is tight, organized and goes on a fast pace,, apparently it was based on a somewhat true events happened in Chicago's o'hare airport back in 2006 ,, but as excited as i was seeing "Scully" is gonna be there it wasn't a wowzer ,,

Alex Sharp was good ,, for a guy who started proffisional acting literally last year ,, he actually was convincing and his facial expressions were on point.

anyway ,, if you have any connection to physics, mathematics and science , this movie will make you "Believe" but if you're not ,, then just don't watch it cuz you're gonna be bored.

There is a lot of math deduction. The protagonist is arrogant, he is in no way empathetic and he is extremely obscessed about the UFO code. However, I saw it to the end because it let me curious about what is behind everything that is going on. The acting is good. Don't see it at night, the pace is very slow.

There were a lot of films about contacts with aliens. Some interesting, some not. In this film, despite many previous "ideas", there is an interesting general idea of its own. But the problem of this film is in some meager implementation. This film was generally interesting to me. But tedious.