From Foresight Features and writer Tony Burgess (Pontypool) comes the science fiction thriller Ejecta. William Cassidy (Julian Richings) is an online conspiracy theorist, who claims he was abducted by aliens 39 years ago. On the night of a major coronal mass ejection, Cassidy gets in contact with a documentary filmmaker named Joe Sullivan (Adam Seybold) to talk about his experiences. In the aftermath of events that happen that night, Cassidy is apprehended and taken to a military compound, where Dr. Tobin (Lisa Houle) interrogates Cassidy about his encounters with extraterrestrials. Co-directed by Matt Wiele and Chad Archibald, Ejecta is the third film Tony Burgess wrote for Collingwood-based Foresight Features, following Septic Man and Hellmouth. Originally conceived to be a found footage film, additional footage was shot a year after principal photography, which added the framing device of Dr. Tobin's interrogations. This results in Ejecta having a very back-and-forth narrative as it switches between the interrogations and the footage that was shot by Joe Sullivan. While the found-footage segments look more or less like a conventionally shot film, there are still some familiar tropes, such as shaky running through the woods and Joe at one point deciding to go back for his camera at a particularly tense moment. Ejecta is really dependent on Julian Richings' lead performance as tormented alien abduction survivor William Cassidy. Plagued with nightmares and blackouts, Cassidy is convinced that the advanced lifeforms that he came into contact with nearly two decades ago left something behind. During the coronal mass ejection, these lifeforms return, which leads to something terrifying. While the film doesn't really bring anything new to the realm of alien encounter movies, Ejecta still turned out to be a pretty effective science fiction thriller, built upon a solid lead performance by Julian Richings.8 | LIKED IT
