I'm usually a little more tougher on reviews on horror movies than this. They tried and mostly succeeded in doing a good job with the story. I thought the desert scenes were well done and creepy. She was mostly by herself with help from her friend on the cloud. (Wifi) I enjoyed that he was watching the perimeter while she was sleeping.

You can't say they didn't try hard, and it was different even if it's like Blair Witch Project. Who cares as long as they have their take on it.

ALIENS: ZONE OF SILENCE is yet another found footage indie tackling the subject of alien abduction. It's similar to at least a dozen others of the last decade with the same premise. The protagonist is a young woman who goes into the desert to look for her missing brother and discovers that aliens might well be responsible. The usual BLAIR WITCH-derived antics ensue, while the film is made on very limited means. There's a little atmosphere and a lot of cliche, but the whole story simply isn't very involving.

Oh, by all means, let's have a young woman, who looks like a fashion magazine cover and who weighs maybe 102 lbs soaking wet, go out into the desert all by herself into a mysterious area in the Mexican desert where able-bodied men have disappeared without a trace.

Let's load her up with enough gear to daunt a 22 year old Seal and have her tramp through sandstorms and desert heat in broad daylight without a HAT to protect her from the sun.

Let's have her only backup be a former Marine hacker type hundreds of miles away using communication links and technology that have been known to fail in this "area". Let her plan be to set up motion detectors and cameras around her tent at night so she can see what might be intruding on her campground, while supplying her with nothing to actually defend herself - apparently the plan is to let the tent walls keep out anything really "bad" ,including rapists, biker gangs, militia, wolf packs, or actual aliens.(Seriously, she doesn't seem to have so much as a pen knife.)

Let's have her stick around even when she finds evidence that her missing brother had been there, even though the absolute smartest play would have been to sprint back to her abandoned car and have the marine tech guy call for backup, towing services, rescue crews and everything else. Especially when she starts seeing mysterious flashing lights where no lights should be, and catches them with her camera gear. (THERE'S your evidence - go get help, ya dummy!)

OK - for what it's worth, I agree with the director's decision to let the movie's final glimpse of the "aliens" (or whatever they were) remain ambiguous and amorphous. The whole idea of the movie was that this "phenomenon" was otherworldly and hard to make out, and IMO a crystal clear shot of a Bug Eyed Gray Man etc would have spoiled things.

Also, for what it's worth: the movie works hard to make the most of its location - some of the scenes look great. The actress playing the explorer is attractive and likable and brings a certain feistiness to her role (even if the character acts like an idiot). The dialog between the characters mostly works, especially the early "vacation" footage that takes place before things get harsh. There's some nice japery and humor here and there. The movie even manage to create some anxiety and dread in a few places, and I did care about the heroine's fate.

All in all: for fans of "found footage horror movie" sub-genre or anyone not too particular about how they spend a couple hours exploring the Netflix horror backlog.