Stream It Or Skip It: ‘John Was Trying to Contact Aliens’ on Netflix, a Very Small Documentary About Very Big Things

After landing a Sundance jury award for short films, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens touches down on Netflix. Filmmaker Matthew Killip was digging around on the internet when he came across a few photos and snippets about a Michigan man who used banks of equipment to send broadcasts into outer space, so he grabbed a camera and flew out to learn more about him. The result is a very small documentary about very big things.

JOHN WAS TRYING TO CONTACT ALIENS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: John Shepherd’s house in Northern Michigan was a tale of two worlds. In an old photo, likely taken in the 1970s, we see one half of the living room, his grandparents sitting comfortably in their easy chairs. In the other half, John fiddles with a knob on banks of equipment that look like they were purchased at a NASA yard sale: Switches, LEDs, monitors, curly cables, thingamajigs, doohickeys, clickers. His gear began in his bedroom and started spilling into the rest of the house. At one point, he and his grandmother pooled their money and put an addition on the house to contain all his gear, including a two-story transmitter. He was, as the title states, trying to contact aliens. Their electric bill must have been astronomical.

Now, John is in his sixties, his vintage Bob Segeresque long hair and beard gone gray and a little frizzy. He sits in front of his large collection of vinyl records. In old video footage, likely from local news broadcasts about odd folks doing odd things in the community, he spins Afrobeat and Tangerine Dream records while conducting a radio show for whoever might be listening hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of miles into space.

Softspoken and warm, John talks about how his father left when he was very young, and his mother was “just different.” His grandparents adopted him, and they lived in a cottage in a rural area that makes a phrase like “smalltown” sound too big. It was not the ideal setting for a gay man like John, who once felt that making contact with another person like himself was unlikely. We see an old photo of him situating a gizmo on a tripod. It looks like a laser ray gun from a 1950s low-budget sci-fi movie, but it apparently actually does something, who knows what, but John knows. In the present day, he sets up the same contraption in a few inches of snow and mutters something about picking up a radio signal, from where, he doesn’t say. Probably from Petoskey or Pierport, not Pluto. So is this guy a nut, or what?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Stop what you’re doing and watch Werner Herzog’s short film The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner. I’ll wait. It’s about 45 minutes long. OK — you’re back? See what I mean?

Memorable Dialogue: I’ll decontextualize this in order to avoid spoiling the film’s pleasant surprise: “Contact has been made.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: No. No, he’s not a nut. He acknowledges that the possibility of making contact with aliens is teensy, but the pursuit nonetheless gave his life meaning and purpose. He points this out with enviable lucidity, with the tone of a man who knows himself and feels no need to further explain himself. He makes the concept of fruitlessly searching the cosmos for extraterrestrial life from a cottage in the woods seem not entirely irrational. And of course, it’s symbolic, profoundly so.

John Was Trying to Contact Aliens doesn’t frame him as a Werner Herzogian eccentric on a conquest of the useless, nor does it exploit him like a Tiger King weirdo. It’s a lovely and earnest mini-portrait offering more delightful revelations in 16 minutes (no spoilers here) than some documentaries do in 90. Killip isn’t interested in the common elements of John’s story, and our instinct is to ask more about his mother and upbringing, how he paid for all that equipment, what he does for a living, stuff like that — stuff that we think defines a character but really only satisfies our need for impossible things like order and clarity. But the film is refreshing in its focus on communication and connection rather than pragmatic earthly concerns, because that, of course, is what truly matters.

Our Call: STREAM IT. John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is a little sliver of humanity that’ll give you a lot of hope.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream John Was Trying to Contact Aliens on Netflix