In Director Rich Christiano’s ‘Unidentified’, we have ourselves a little Christian based ‘sci-fi’ flick which tells a story about a series of strange UFO encounters appearing across the land and has all of the subtlety of a bazooka with a load sledgehammers strapped to its rocket.

Now right off the bat, whether you believe in the Christian faith, or you don’t, as a movie ‘Unidentified’ is pretty darn poor.  Now this comes off as a bit of a surprise in that Christiano’s last Christian based film ‘Time Changers’, released some four years ago was pretty decent.  This causes some concern because one would think that over a period of time, particularly a period of four years, that a person would only improve in their craft, but ‘Unidentified’ is so far below what ‘Time Changers’ was that it would cause one to wonder if they were even made by the same person.

Keith (Jonathan Aube) and Brad (Josh Adamson) are reporters for a magazine that presents ‘both sides’ of the issues called The Other Side, or something.  Their editor gets wind of some strange UFO sightings and wants his two crack scribes to look into it.  It seems that reporter Brad from Down Under is a bit an irritating skeptic, believing in nothing, quite sure these UFO sightings are a hoax and not worth his time.  Keith on the other hand is not quite sure, though he being the good, but somewhat non-practicing Christian, he does have his doubts about the presence of such things of which the Bible has never spoken of.  Also along for the ride are Keith’s uber Christian friend, and magazine reporter Darin (Michael Blain-Rozgay) who has his own views of the phenomena. 

It turns out that these individuals are being abducted and given information about who not to follow and how certain individuals must be removed as they are holding up the

further evolution of the species, and as Darin has discovered, most of these people are believers in stuff other than the Bible, like witchcraft or the paranormal or dirty girlie books.  They also toss this old man who is like a ‘Deep Throat’ character who knows all about the government secrets and their weird paranormal agencies.  So who’s on the right path?  The Christian based Keith or the non-believing Brad?  Don’t worry, I’m not gonna spoil it for you.

Again, subtle ‘Unidentified’ was not.  But then if you know anything about Christianity, you also know there’s not a lot wiggle room within it.  Either you’re of Christ or you’re of the world.  This is good and fine, though I personally would have liked a little more cleverness in the delivering of the message as opposed to getting beat up by it.  However, it is the acting, framing pacing and editing… things are generally required by the most basic of movies... that sink ‘Unidentified’.  I know this thing was shot on the low-low, but the actors in this film, though game, were severely lacking in skill.  If you’re making a film that rests heavily on delivering a message, then you better have folks that can convincingly deliver said message and not appear if they are simply reading from that days script sides.  Editing wise, the film could have stood for a much tighter cut as too many scenes lingered and dragged long after the emotional impact, which was minimal to start with, had departed. 

My main issue with this movie, as far as the narrative goes anyway, was with the character of Darin.  Here is a reporter questioning one of the abductees for this ‘unbiased’ magazine.  Darin, as we know is ‘true believer’ which is cool and all, but his job is to ask this woman what happened – that’s it.   His job is not bash her for her paranormal beliefs, now matter how crazy they may be, and shove HIS beliefs down her throat, which is exactly what he did.  Come on Christiano, that ain’t cool.  A character such as this would next stick the woman on a wooden stake and then set her on fire if she continues with her ‘crazy’ beliefs.  You want to convert this woman, do it on your time just like Jehovah Witnesses do, not on your ‘unbiased’ magazines time.

If you want to see a decent Christian based movie, again rent Christiano’s own ‘Time Changers’, as it had a far better cast, better story, was way more entertaining and still allows for no wiggle room within the Christian faith.  I guess it’s a sad state as it would appear that Christiano got less funding and less resources for his follow up as no one seemed to want to pony up to make better Christian based movies.  Not to cause any trouble, but it looks the Enemy’s plan is working if movies like ‘Unidentified’ is what Christians are using to fight him with.