YMMV / Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County

• Adaptation Displacement: Incident in Lake County is a remake of The McPherson Tape, an indie horror film by the same director which saw a limited release in 1989. The 1989 original is actually far more chilling, and frankly starkly realistic, than the remake, even excluding the bad TV Cut. The crudity of the camcorder footage is only too believable for going on 25 years ago.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Do the aliens mess with the appliances, electricity etc to troll the family? Or are they keeping their distance because they don't know how well they can fight back? Kurt for example was able to subdue one with a shotgun - so maybe the aliens are testing the water. Or perhaps they're trying to flush them out of the house, like they did to Kurt, Brian and Matthew?
  • Similarly, are the aliens scoping out the house before attacking, or were they investigating with no intention of harming anyone until Kurt shot one of them?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The makeout between Matthew and Linda - where it's implied that the aliens influenced them to do so. The two don't really reference it afterwards, and the aliens don't seem to have any reason to do it other than to mess with them. The scene was stated by Word of God to be one of several written as Padding so they could bump the movie up to ninety minutes. Of those sequences, it's definitely the one that stands out the worst.
• Broken Base: The performances. One half finds them unrealistic, another finds them believable.
• Fanon: A common fan theory is that Rosie is part alien, hence why she helps them. One of the talking heads thinks she's possessed.
• Funny Moments: During the chase, Tommy realises he's peed his pants over the whole thing.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Strange beings that distort the camera? Why does that sound familiar?
  • Brian scoffs at Tommy for buying the video camera, and his directing aspirations. Michael Buie (Brian) became a director, while Kristian Ayre (Tommy) didn't.
  • Mel's actress would later star on Stargate, getting a more direct connection to space.
• I Am Not Shazam: The original version is frequently released under the title of "The McPherson Tape", but the family in that film is actually named Van Heese; they were only renamed McPherson for the remake.
• Memetic Mutation: It's something of a game for fans to mock that the mother is never seen without a glass of wine. She only puts it down once in the movie to sweep up some glass.
• Narm: Kurt's rather on-the-nose reaction to Mel bringing a black man to dinner is a bit too theatrical to be realistic compared to the rest of the otherwise very down-to-earth movie. It's also completely unnecessary, as the next scene would have Kurt complaining about it to his brothers.
• Narm Charm: The mother thinking that the aliens messing with the house is her late husband's ghost. It should be ridiculous, but mostly just ends up being incredibly sad.
• Older Than They Think: This film pre-dates both The Blair Witch Project and M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. It isn't the originator of the 'found footage' genre though - that belongs to Cannibal Holocaust. The 1989 original was in fact inspired by The War of the Worlds (1938).
• Once Original, Now Common: Much like The Blair Witch Project, this early found footage film took its concept very seriously, and went to great lengths to try and look realistic. Many now grown up fans admitted to be terrified of how realistic it looked at the time. After a wave of more polished found footage films in the 2000s and 2010s, newer fans might not find anything too radical or special about this.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The aliens making the appliances go haywire is understandable, if quite freaky. But the fact that Matthew and Linda start kissing, thinking they're kissing their spouses... especially if it means the aliens can Mind Rape from far away.
  • Its heavily hinted that the McPhersons have been abducted before and never knew it. Imagine going through your life never knowing you were taken and experimented on like that until you find out in the worst way imaginable.
• Retroactive Recognition: Viewers may be taken out of the film now that they can recognise Renee from Entourage, Mel from Sons of Anarchy and Brian from Grey's Anatomy.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The "static" effect in the TV Cut, which, at one point, doesn't even cover up the timer. The original cut does the static much better.
  • The original has the scene where Kurt shoots the alien with his shotgun. The gun clearly has a cap in it, as the sound isn't as loud.
• Tear Jerker: Tommy's confessional to the camera, where he wishes his dad was still around. He's essentially realised that both his brothers and Matthew are gone, and Renee is definitely dead. And he has no idea if the rest of his family will survive the night. They don't.
• Unbuilt Trope: As the first true found footage film (as Cannibal Holocaust deals with the search for the footage as well), this also has talking heads debating whether or not the footage is real.
• The Woobie: Tommy even before the aliens attack. His dad is dead, his mother is a raging alcoholic, and he has to take care of her since his brothers and sister live far away.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The special effects for the aliens are incredibly impressive for such a low-budget production, aided by the good direction that plays Nothing Is Scarier for all its worth.

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