On the Trail of UFOs: Night Visitors opens up with a time-honored tradition in the extraterrestrial genre: an examination of unexplained cattle mutilations. It’s effective for a number of reasons, mainly that it supposedly provides concrete evidence that aliens exist. The imagery of cattle skulls and quick flashes of the more graphic mutilations effectively ropes in the audience. From there, we are given a parade of experts, people who claim to have been abducted, conspiracy theorists, etc. Each has a story to tell, and evidence to show us that what has happened is unquestionably true. We get the standard tales of strange lights in the sky on remote parts of the highway, objects stopping on a dime and changing directions, strange procreation experiments, and blocks of lost time. 

On the Trail of UFOs: Night Visitors does well in making things visually compelling while numerous experts and conspiracy theorists talk about the subject. Examining events that have mostly occurred in Colorado, writer/director Seth Breedlove paints the picturesque mountains and endless plains with a more sinister color. Mountains cease to be part of the landscape and instead, are homes to secret government bases dealing in shadowy corners. The flat plains become an endless graveyard for the unfortunate livestock who happened to get beamed up into a spaceship. He punctuates the stories being told with interesting visuals of odd lights zooming through the sky or the large shadow of a ship casting a menacing shadow over a field of scurrying cows. It’s an engaging way to hold the attention of the viewer and drum up a sense of unease. 

The film is led by narrator/interviewer Shannon Legro. Legro is an effective presence when engaging with the experts about the subject. She seemingly asks the right questions and probes into the right subject matter. She’s very clearly a veteran of these types of documentaries, appearing very comfortable on camera and with the people she speaks to. 

This is another one of those documentaries that are targeted to a very specific kind of audience, mainly people who already have a strong sense of belief in these types of things. As a result, this plays less like a documentary and more like a visual essay. There is a lack of opposing viewpoints in the movie, which eliminates the possibility of any kind of skepticism or alternate explanations for the occurrences that are discussed. This hurts not only credibility but makes it less interesting to watch. Having an expert offer a different thought as to why the cows got mutilated or what happens to all that blood allows for an audience to draw their own conclusions. Same for the other stories told. But again, this is made for a very specific audience, and that audience probably wouldn’t much care for that alternative viewpoint anyway. 

While more visually interesting than most, and with a veteran interviewer like Legro, On the Trail of UFOs: Night Visitors doesn’t offer much in the way of new stories or insight into the ones being told. It’s a well-worn path we’ve walked a bunch of times before, and very much a case of a film preaching to the choir. 

4 out of 10