Fire in the Sky is a 1993 American science fiction drama film[4] directed by Robert Lieberman and adapted by Tracy Tormé.

On November 5, 1975 in Snowflake, Arizona, logger Travis Walton, and his co-workers—Mike Rogers, Allan Dallis, David Whitlock, Greg Hayes and Bobby Cogdill—head to work in the White Mountains.

Curious, Walton gets out of the truck to examine closer, only for the hovering object to react and strike him with a bright beam of light, hurling him several feet backwards.

Returning to town to report the incident, the loggers are met with skepticism by investigators Sheriff Blake Davis and Lieutenant Frank Watters.

Breaking out of its membrane, a bewildered Walton finds himself adrift in a zero-gravity alien environment inside a cylindrical enclosure, whose walls contain other similar cocoons.

Struggling in the low gravity, he accidentally breaches a nearby cocoon, horrified to discover that it contains decomposing human remains.

Walton attempts to escape, but is apprehended by two aliens who drag him down corridors full of terrestrial detritus such as shoes and keys before arriving in an examination chamber.

The aliens hold the struggling Walton to a platform in the centre of the chamber, stripping him of his clothes and covering him with an elastic material that completely restrains him.

Despite Walton's terrified screams, the aliens clinically subject him to a torturous experiment in which a gelatinous substance is forced into his mouth, a tube is inserted down his throat, his jaw is locked open and a device is stabbed into his neck.

As a needle-like ocular probe extends towards his exposed eye, Walton suddenly reawakens from his flashback in a doctor's office.

The closing titles inform that in 1993, Walton, Rogers, and Dallis were resubmitted to additional polygraph examinations, which they passed, corroborating their innocence.

Patrick, who felt typecast in villainous roles following Terminator 2: Judgment Day, gained weight and grew a beard for the audition.

[9][10] Reviews for Fire in the Sky were mixed:[11] the film holds a 50% approval rating at review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 30 appraisals, with an average score of 5.4/10 and the consensus: "While a valiant cast brings an authentic urgency to its harrowing alien abduction saga, Fire in the Sky unravels a story that's ultimately too thin and frustratingly coy with its revelations.

[14] John Ferguson of the Radio Times wrote, "Lieberman wisely concentrates on the emotional impact of the event on a close-knit circle of friends and family, although the eventual revelation of the abduction is genuinely scary.

"[18] Critic James Berardinelli applauded the "stunning, gut-wrenching realism" of the abduction scenes, but called the film a "muddled-up mess" that "can't make up its mind whether it wants to be horror, drama or science-fiction.

[21] Fire in the Sky was nominated for four Saturn Awards: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Music, and for Patrick, Best Actor.