I love the found footage genre, and I enjoy the mythology surrounding aliens and the government so for me, Area 51 was a must see, but it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief and logic leaps to get to the interesting last half hour, which will leave you with more questions than answers. Ambiguity isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you feel like the filmmakers know what is happening and did not just do it because it would be cool.
Area 51 is a found footage movie that has a documentary style introduction to create a sense of foreboding and mystery for the viewer going in. Three allegedly normal friends decide to embark on a journey to discover the secrets of Area 51 with the help of various contacts on the Internet and locals after one of the three has a mysterious experience at a party. Area 51’s story is extremely flawed, but it does have a keen sense of momentum and spectacle as it unfolds.

SPOILERS

If you were really a bunch of normal guys, you would not be totally cool with a friend breaking and entering into some high-level government official’s home, especially if you are black. How many guns would this guy own? And how exactly did they find that guy? It wasn’t like they had spent weeks staking out the tarmac. They saw a plane, knew it was the one that he was on and found him in seconds. Yeah, right. And this high-level government official doesn’t have an alarm on his door that requires a four-digit code to shut down? And he isn’t going to notice that all those toiletries are missing immediately and set a high alert? Sure, whatever.
I get that the aliens somehow escaped. Um, how exactly? It took two people using the fingerprint to open the gate so how did the alien get out to pull a Halloween 20 Years (H20) later on the black guy? I understand that the REAL Area 51 was in that section, but it seems like the aliens had jurisdiction and free reign in their underground lair and infinite white space. Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the layout of the area, but the UFO was on the other side of the gate. So how are Jelena and Reid being sucked around, and how does their camera make it outside? The end is exciting, but it doesn’t make sense. Do the escaped aliens or the aliens that originally kidnapped and brainwashed Reid to break in so they could follow him and break their buddies out suck up Darren and Ben? Because the latter makes more sense, but then did they really need Reid for that since they have all those powers and teeth? Maybe one of the kidnapping aliens and not the escaped aliens was actually pulling the H20? And I know that Area 51 implies that the US experimented on Jelena and children, but why? Is Area 51 just throwing all the alien legends on the wall to see what sticks? I need a cohesive story! If there were more answers, I would be totally happy because the last half hour was pretty cool.