Under the Crystal Sky (2025)

Film review #698

Director: Matt Hartley

SYNOPSIS: An indigenous American family witness unidentified flying objects in the sky at night. Meanwhile, an encroaching U.S. army threatens to make things difficult for them…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Under a Crystal Sky is a 2025 sci-fi film. The plot concerns an indigenous family living in the 1800s American Southwest, who one night witness a strange event in the sky with unidentified flying objects. The family is also under threat from the American Military, who have also moved into the area. If this sounds fairly vague, then that is by design: the film has no dialogue, and is extremely slow to establish anything. But overall, there isn’t really much to establish: family sees UFO event, American soldiers come, attack man, daughter finds alien artefact and gets revenge. It’s pretty simple, and could be effective, but even with a runtime of just over an hour, the film is still way too long for what it wants to do: this could have easily have been a ten or fifteen minute film.

There’s plenty of large, high quality shots of the American wilderness which are nice, and while the film is shot in black-and-white the light from the alien artefacts provide a green light that is the only source of colour, which accentuates their otherworldliness. Not completely original, but somewhat effective. The whole film just feels somewhat…sterile? Everything is a bit too crisp and clean, particularly given the time and setting of the film. There’s also a lack of anything really specific that makes it feel authentic. The indigenous characters are portrayed by indigenous actors, which is good, but there’s no real sense of any specifics about their way of life and how the appearance of UFOs interferes with their beliefs or worldview, it’s just very vague. The director/writer seems to flout their accomplishments in financing and funding films more than making them, and maybe that’s what this film feels like: it was made by a financer, rather than a filmmaker; it’s a product more than a creative film. Overall, there’s nothing really of interest here.