Netflix’s new Investigation Alien docuseries traces journalist and ufologist George Knapp, as he assembles a team of collaborators to prove that alien beings exist among us. Knapp’s objectives go further: he seeks to tell us why they’re here. Investigation Alien represents a lifetime of Knapp’s investigations in the face of a plethora of obstacles, both governmental and systemic, who, he claims, are desperate to prevent him from outing the truth. Knapp’s journey takes him across the breadth of the US, Mexico, Brazil, and even Europe as he unearths new information about known UFO sightings.
Knapp is not altogether successful in his endeavor, despite his Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards for his journalism, a lengthy stint as a TV newsman, and a clear enthusiasm for his thesis. Incontrovertible proof of alien habitation on Earth proves difficult for Knapp to come by, despite there being a wealth of UFO sightings and witnesses eager to share their stories. By the end of Investigation Alien, the audience is left with a collection of intriguing but unproven theories that still require a leap of faith. Here are 10 reveals from the film that Knapp suggests should change minds.
10 Animal Experimentation
Knapp’s first port of call is a pair of Oregon ranchers, who have mysteriously lost cattle. Colby Marshall, from Burns, relates how five range bulls on his property were mutilated overnight, their blood siphoned and their genitals, lips, ears, and internal organs surgically removed. Dave Ward, a fifth-generation rancher nearby, has lost 20 cattle in the last 12 months in the same way. Local law enforcement insists a group of devil-worshipers might be responsible, but Knapp has other ideas: strange objects seen in the skies overhead suggest that aliens are experimenting with the livestock’s harvested organs.
9 Violence in Colares
Turning to Brazil, Knapp highlights the famous sightings in 1977 in Colares, on the Amazon River, when locals were attacked by airborne vessels. 40 years on, Aurora Fernandes insists that she saw a rotating disc in the sky, from which sprung a red ray of light that pierced three holes in her chest. She smelled ether and described the sensation of having blood taken. Others in Icoraci were attacked in the same way between June 1977 and August 1978. Local journalist Carlos Mendez reports that CIA-like men appeared after the event and collected all the footage or records of the attacks.
8 The Jellyfish Alien
Back in Las Vegas, UFO journalist Jeremy Corbell and Knapp come across footage released by an unidentified whistleblower showing the eerie trail of an unidentified object, now known as the “Jellyfish” UFO, as it floats across a US military base in Iraq. The identity of the informant cannot be revealed as the action to leak the footage would constitute a felony. However, Knapp finds Marine veteran Michael Cincoski, who insists he watched the video while stationed on an Iraqi base in 2018. Circoski says that everyone on base was sworn to secrecy, but that the craft eventually dived into the sea.
7 Tampico And The USOs
The Jellyfish’s underwater exploits open up an entirely new area of investigation for Knapp. He notes that many UFO sightings take place over or near a body of water, and ponders whether the 70% of the planet’s surface being covered by water might yield a clue to their hiding place. He travels to Tampico, Mexico, where dozens of UFO encounters have been reported just off the coast. He finds that the locals attribute their lack of hurricanes to their UFO protectors, who, they believe, live under the sea. Local meteorologist, Amalia Avalos, laughs this off – it’s simply the currents diverting warm water.
6 Kremer’s Dot
Undeterred, Knapp enlists the help of underwater archaeologist Rory Kremer, who deep-dives the nearby Channel Islands in search of an underwater UFO headquarters, in an area a local fisherman has claimed his boat was encircled by a bright light, and pulled down, forcing him to cut the anchor. Kremer’s examination of the ocean floor is inconclusive, but on one night his cameras pick up a bright dot in the sky, which zooms in and out, before plunging into the sea. Kremer and Knapp together deduce that their investigation is being observed by otherworldly beings.
5 The Arrow Report
In mid-investigation, Knapp’s worldview is directly challenged by the very government agency he’s seeking to persuade – the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office released its report in January 2022, in which it claimed to have thoroughly investigated 512 incidents of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), and found “no empirical evidence” of alien technology. Enraged, Knapp quotes the famous Roswell incident in 1947, when the USAF issued a press release confirming they’d found a UFO, only to retract it 24 hours later claiming, laughably, that they’d mistaken it for a weather balloon.
4 Indonesian Jungle Sighting
Knapp resolves to counter the Pentagon’s report with one of his own and continues his investigation. He turns to former US marine Michael Herrera, who reels Knapp in with a story from Western Sumatra, where, in 2009, Herrera was on a humanitarian mission. There Herrera saw a 300-foot vessel hovering over the brow of a hill, lights rotating and flashing. Herrera’s story, however, had a twist: he says the machine was manufactured with rivets and seams. Herrera tells Knapp that he believes the government has copied alien technology to build their very own spaceship. The footage he took, unfortunately, was stolen.
3 The Council Bluffs Incident
George Knapp then finds himself in Council Bluffs, Iowa, chasing down Mike Moore, who in December 1997 was driving with his fire chief father when they saw a red light drop out of the sky. They visited the burning crash site and Mike took away some samples of twisted metal, which he had kept in a box for 25 years. Knapp sends the metal away for analysis and finds it’s composed of randomly mixed titanium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon & iron, but not from anything out of this world. Disappointed but resolute, Knapp suggests aliens would be perfectly capable of manufacturing earthly metals.
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2 Phoenix Lights
Knapp’s most persuasive evidence isn’t new. The March 13, 1997, sightings over Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix are well known, and supported by none other than actor Kurt Russell, who was at the airport that day. A multitude of witnesses saw two lights suddenly appear in the night sky, and then four more, indicating a huge, mile-wide boomerang-shaped object. So widespread were the viewings, that the government felt the need to step in to prevent a public panic, claiming that the lights were nothing but flares. Knapp interviews several witnesses, some with authentic-looking photographic evidence, who insist otherwise.
1 Alien Time-Travel
Having failed to conclusively prove his case, Knapp turns to Mike Masters, an anthropology professor at Montana Tech, to answer the “why” question. In Investigation Alien, Masters takes Knapp to the Capitol Reef National Park, Utah to show him 4000-year-old rock paintings depicting men in spacesuits, and short alien-looking creatures with pointy heads and large wrap-around eyes. Intriguingly, Masters posits that after a few more hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, humans would likely look very much like the drawn characters, and drops the bombshell in Investigation Alien that visiting aliens today have likely traveled across time to visit their ancient ancestors.
Investigation Alien is a docuseries featuring reporter George Knapp as he travels globally to uncover evidence of UFOs and examine their existence on Earth. Released in 2024, the series delves into extraterrestrial phenomena and aims to provide new insights into unidentified aerial phenomena.
- Cast
- George Knapp
- Character(s)
- Self
- Release Date
- November 8, 2024
- Network
- Netflix