Communion Movie Review

A serious adaptation of the purportedly non-fiction bestseller by Whitley Strieber, about his 1985 abduction by dwarf drones under the control of spindly, huge-eyed beings (a breed sometimes referred to by UFO hipsters as “Schwa"). Even skeptics who've met Strieber declare he's sincere, so either the “visitors” are real or he's nuts. Christopher Walken's twitchy Method acting could well support the latter conclusion. The film – produced and written by Strieber – is remarkably candid about the author's eccentricities, right down to the notorious episode in which Strieber claimed a vision of Mr. Peanut (replaced onscreen by a top-hatted toy robot). Philippe Mora's direction, full of strange juxtapositions and hallucination imagery, may be too loose to please all but the very curious and New Age types. Strieber, meanwhile, followed his book with two more vaporous accounts (Breakthrough and Transformation) and a Strieberesque novelization of the Roswell incident, Majestic.

1989 (R) 103m/C Christopher Walken, Lindsay Crouse, Frances Sternhagen, Joel Carlson, Andreas Katsulas, Basil Hoffman, Terri Hanauer; D: Philippe Mora; W: Whitley Strieber; M: Eric Clapton. VHS, Beta, LV NO