MAJIC / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: ERIN BERRY / WRITERS: ERIN BERRY, DAVID PLUSCAUSKAS / STARRING: PAULA BRANCATI, MICHAEL SEATER, RICHARD FITZPATRICK, PAULINO NUNES, DEBRA McGARTH  / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SIMON SHOHET /EDITOR: JULIA BLUA / MUSIC: STEVE LONDON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Pippa Bernwood, is a sassy, opinionated vlogger who presents a sceptical show ‘The Alarm Clock’ to critically examine fake news and explore the new secular religion of UFO and conspiracy theory. This quickly goes under the metaphorical bus when she arranges to meet up with a creepy old man in a park. Richard Anderson tells her about the shadowy US government

organisation called Majic, which is also called MJ-12 and Majestic 12 by conspiracy theorists but for insiders it is only known as Majic. He certainly seems to know his UFOs from his UAPs!

Without any real evidence Pippa (played with gusto by Paula Brancati) doesn’t buy any of this twaddle about Majic and its involvement with the Roswell flying saucer crash of 1947. Afterwards Pippa’s sleazy agent (it is part of the job description) tries to get her to promote a dodgy drug on

her vlogg, and she meets a variety of quirky friends who discuss the validity of Roswell, aliens and the possibly or not of extraterrestrials amongst us.

When invited to Anderson’s cabin in the woods, he explains that alien reptilians arrived from the Antares star system at Tunguska in 1908 and helped to establish the Soviet Union. The goal of the reptilians, who can shape-shift into human form when required, is to defeat the USA. To fight

the reptilians/Soviets the US became allied with the grey-type aliens who crash landed at Roswell in 1947, after arriving from Zeta Reticuli. From then on the Cold War between the US and USSR was a front for the battle between the alien reptilians and greys with us as their pawns in their larger game.

Things get more complex when Pippa starts perceiving two different time lines, one in which Kennedy is assassinated, the other he isn’t. This seems to be at the doing of the aliens and the battle to befuddle and control us. Into this mix, Pippa is told the Roswell crash was faked and the Majic documents released as part of a disinformation project to distract the Soviets from US atomic bomb research. At this stage she experiences missing time and wonders if she has been abducted by aliens.

These events challenge Pippa’s clear-cut attitude that ‘fake news’ can be sorted out from reality, and the film itself uses a fantastic mixture of conspiracy theory and consensus facts to make us equally wonder what is real.

All the scenes, indoors and out, are dark and leached of colour but they are vibrant with cracking high-speed dialogue often inter-cut with rapid edits of ‘real’ UFO/Majic documents and visuals. It is enough to send your head spinning like, like, well like, a god damn flying saucer (no offence intended to any religious types or flying saucer-riding aliens out there).