The WTF movie genre just broke the speed of light with the dark sci-fi drama Roswell Delirium, written and directed by indie auteur Richard Bakewell. In an alternate historical timeline that is different than ours, America gets attacked by nuclear missiles in the 80s on the night J.R. gets shot on the show Dallas. Mayday Malone (Kylee Levien) is watching TV with her Grandpa (Mike Wurst), when the news report breaks in with how the Russians have sent warheads our way. Wendy Malone (Arielle Bodenhausen) tries to get her daughter and father away safely, but the truck won’t start. Wendy is forced to pull Mayday away to shelter, promising to come back for her physically challenged father, left in the truck. They never see Grandpa again.
Two years later, in 1988, missile attacks have occurred again, but people in Roswell are adjusting. Sometimes, the people in suits will come into Mrs. Peltzer’s (Lisa Whelchel) class and drag away a screaming kid who tests high on the Geiger counter. Mayday is regarded as a total spazz by the mean girls Becky (Kayden Brenna Tokarski) and Lynne (Georgia MacPhail), who make fun of how poor Mayday is. Mayday’s father (Ryan Kennedy) is gearing up for another moon mission he is piloting for NASA, and is constantly yelling at his wife and daughter at the table. Everyone is worried about “the cough,” a chronic disease that sprang up after the nukes. Wendy is even told to ask Betty (Dee Wallace) to leave the UFO themed diner she works at because her grandson is showing signs of infection.
“…abductions by the UFOs that started out at Spacerock…”
Strange things start to happen in town out by Spacerock, which is what Area 51 was renamed. We then jump forward over a decade, where Mayday has grown up to become Firefly (Ashton Solecki), who has scars all over one side of her body. She explains to her psychiatrist, Jerry Baskin (Anthony Michael Hall), that the scars are the result of the abductions by the UFOs that started out at Spacerock when she was younger…
If that looks like a much plumper synopsis than most, it is only the tiniest tip of this epic UFO iceberg. With Roswell Delirium, Bakewell pulls off some of the most ambitious world-building ever seen in an indie feature. It is as if he were plotting a multi-part platinum series but was able to pack in all of it in under two hours. That is some Yogi Kudu That’s Incredible style movie magic right there. And none of it feels clipped or rushed to get it in like it does with so much other low-budget sci-fi.
"…excellent movie in the same cult territory as Donnie Darko"
