In 1985, sci-fi novelist Whitney Striber had a dream which led to a close encounter. It became the subject for his book 'Communion' which became a best-seller. Four years later he gives us this. True story though it may be, it is clearly too personal for Striber to manipulate (even just a little bit) to make it the right shape and form for a movie. Instead it remains too abstract, and subsequently clumsy. But that is only half the problem.

Communion wins my award for biggest miscast in cinema history. Christopher Walken does everything wrong, starting with the way he delivers his dialogue. He is not even remotely engaged in the story, he is emotionally dead. Walken is portraying somebody who went though what must've been the most traumatic experience that a person could have. The only time he comes close to showing signs of trauma is his ability to make himself cry (a little) at the end of one scene.

Next, there is the matter of visual effects. If you were to walk into a room where this was on TV, and up to the part when we meet the 'little blue doctors' and their slightly taller, skinnier red-skinned cousins, you might think you were watching an Ed Wood flick, or something from that decade. Looking at these creatures, one is more likely to think they are cute rather than creepy or surreal. Anything that looks like rubber on strings belongs in a puppet theatre, not in a sci-fi thriller.

I guess the only crew member who did a competent job in their field is Eric Clapton, who wrote a good theme for an otherwise mediocre score. Communion has much potential, but sadly it ends up being one of those films that you are glad when it is over.

Novelist Whitley Strieber adapted his own book to the screen, a "non-fiction" account of his encounter with aliens. Occasionally intense and haunting piece about alien-abduction which doesn't hold back on the probing details and bug-eyed little green men. Christopher Walken plays Strieber as an unassuming family man who suffers the alien encounter while vacationing in the country. First-half of the film is quite intriguing, but it begins to unravel from there, becoming 'surreal' in the worst sense. The director, Philippe Mora, has a good eye, but he drops the ball, letting the project become murky and disjointed, and ultimately unabsorbing for the audience. Certainly worth a look for Walken's fans (he's solid, as usual). Lindsey Crouse is also fine as Strieber's wife and it's always nice to see Frances Sternhagen's work, here playing another in her stable of medical professionals. ** from ****

I don't think Communion would work nearly as well, in its own sort of warped-entertaining way, without Christopher Walken. Its budget would appear to be pretty low despite the pyrotechnics and veneer of effects; watch those scenes with the aliens, as weirdly cute and obviously fake as they are, for proof of that. And other actors around him, including Lindsay Crouse as the main character's wife and their son Andrew (Joel Carson),don't impress much except in their rigid one-dimensional parts, she as the shrill wife, he the precocious/scared kid.

So it falls on Walken to steal the show, and really, how could he not with this? Another actor might play Whitley Streiber- named after the author and supposedly based on the author's actual experiences with aliens- with a straight face, maybe like Richard Drefuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a down-to-earth father and husband who is good to his kid (more or less) and loves his wife and has wisecracks and an original sensibility as a novelist to spare. But Walken, when he walks in (see what I did there),does his own thing with his unique, sometimes awkward and hilarious vocal inflections, and a way of looking at things that can be over the top as dead-pan, if that makes sense.

Actually, to give a better example of what Walken can do here better than anyone, watch the scenes where he reacts first to the blazing lights of the alien ships (a kind of detached amusement, some interest when his son screams, and even a smirk of "hah, you don't amuse, me" to the aliens when they arrive). Then, when he's on the ship, oh boy: this is when we get to the bizarre stuff, as Walken talks to the camera ("I am me, I am here, we are all together" like in I Am the Walrus or something),or sits back reading a magazine, or has an ambiguous response to the aliens advances with shaking hands. Probing him, of course, turns out to be another matter, albeit we see this all when Whitley is under hypnosis.

So a lot of this, plus some random scenes where we see Whitley's writing process writing under different characters and voices on a monitor, or those hypnosis scenes (or a classic scene where he sees everyone on a bus as a giant bug - Walken in the midst of sci-fi comedy Kafka),makes for some classic Christopher Walken bits. Hell, the guy even dances from time to time! This and a few creative touches as director from Philippe Mora help make this a kind of guilty pleasure. I can't recommend it the same way I could Close Encounters, since that one genuinely inspires and awes and gives great performances and music. This one has Eric Clapton on an off-day, low-rent alien fx and lighting cues, and it just kind of... ends really, on a note that should have been a few minutes before. But if you love Walken being "Walken", and want some cheesy alien-abduction sci-fi, you can surely look here for the goods - certainly it's a big step up from a more recent self-serious "true story" alien movie, The Fourth Kind.