Christo Roppolo is a former filmmaker who now sees UFOs. Through interviews with him and people around him and videos he took of what he claims to be UFOs, this documentary explores his history of UFO sightings, how it has affected his life, how he almost preaches about them, and how he is seen as he basically obsesses over these sightings and what they may mean. Roppolo reached out to director Justin Gear by sending him hours and hours of video from his sightings and investigations of them. Gear takes this footage and mixes it with interviews of Roppolo and his neighbors, friends, and people of his town to show what he sees or claims to see with experiences from others and feelings directly from the source.
The way the film is built is very evenly would be the best way to describe it. The film is an even stream of home videos showing lights and shapes in the sky that Roppolo claims are UFOs and proof of extraterrestrial life mix with the aforementioned interviews. This unfortunately becomes very monotone and a bit dull as the film advances. The filmmaker clearly wants to let the videos and interviews speak for themselves, but those videos and interviews are a bit bland to be honest. Justin Gear also served as director of photography for the film’s interview parts. The film has the look of a typical lower budget documentary with definitive found footage parts (Roppolo’s footage) and interviews that are shot quick and almost guerilla style.
The film’s budget definitely shows in this aspect of it. As for the film’s music which is used sparsely and to match what is on screen is done by a slew of artists such as Ant’lrd, Brad Davis, David Hickox, Matt Whitson, and Wray. This music works with the film and its style being more background than anything which is par for the course with most documentaries unless they are music documentaries. Curse of the Man Who Sees UFOs is a documentary that will appeal to UFOs enthusiasts and not many others unfortunately.
It’s a bit bland and only offers one man’s point of view for most of its runtime. His proofs of extraterrestrial activity are simple and easily explained away and his tendency to go with conspiracy theories give him a bit of a crazy impression when perhaps he is not completely nuts but the way things are explored make him sound as so. A more varied documentary would have given more doubts about that and would have given more interesting angles to the UFOs and the visitors from other worlds.