Feature first-timer Simon Ryninks writes and directs this likably daft but big-hearted YA comedy drama, inspired by West Wales\u2019s reputation as a hotspot for UFO sightings \u2013 particularly Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire, where many saucer-eyed people in 1977 really did report close encounters of the first kind. Now the scene is the fictionalised Welsh town of Caradoc in 1999, a world of smoking in pubs, dot-matrix computer printouts, Sony Handicam video cameras and droll references to the New Labour government.<\/p>\n
Maz (Nerys Amber Stocks) is a teenager doing A-levels, haunted by the death of her dad five years before: a scientist working at a top secret Ministry of Defence base who was killed in a mysterious incident involving a flash of white light from above. She witnessed this terrible event as a kid, having cheekily smuggled herself into the base in the back of his car, but now can\u2019t quite remember it in detail. PTSD? Or have aliens wiped her memory?<\/p>\n
She is obsessed with the idea that her dad isn\u2019t dead but rather was abducted by aliens, and that she might yet be able to see him again. So she conceives a plan to get back into that heavily guarded base, a scheme that is to involve her loyal but nervous best mate Elis (Tom Maya) and gibbering local ufologist Bryn (Aneurin Barnard).<\/p>\n
And for extra help with understanding the vast reaches of the cosmos and opening the doors of perception, they ask new age shop owner and drug enthusiast Shifty Gruff (an amusing turn from Michael Sheen), Caradoc\u2019s own Howard Marks, who supplies shrooms to the local youth and offers to give hypnotherapy to Maz to unlock memories and visions. \u201cHave you done regression therapy before?\u201d asks Elis suspiciously. \u201cI have in a past life \u2026\u201d says Gruff smoothly. When his hypnosis is unexpectedly successful, Gruff becomes very excited. Elis warns him: \u201cWith great ability comes great \u2026\u201d and Gruff interrupts: \u201cCommercial opportunity!\u201d<\/p>\n
Amid the extraterrestrial shenanigans, there\u2019s room for some melancholy thoughts that UFO belief is just an inability to accept death, to accept that this, here on Earth, is all that there is. This is entertaining stuff from Ryninks, though I was sad that there wasn\u2019t a bigger role for the excellent Kimberley Nixon. It could spin off nicely as a TV series.<\/p>\n
Out There screened at the Edinburgh film festival<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feature first-timer Simon Ryninks writes and directs this likably daft but big-hearted YA comedy drama, inspired by West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-737995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}