What on Earth?. USA 2009. Directed by Suzanne Taylor

After seeing William Gazecki's great documentary Crop Circles: Quest for Truth (2002), my view towards crop circle phenomena turned upside down. Although I have loved UFO and paranormal stories since I was a little kid, I always remembered the headlines that told two old men making all of the crop circles in Great Britain. I believed the story too. In fact, two geezers called Doug and Dave were responsible of few, but there were still hundreds of crop circles that couldn't have been made by them. Especially when crop circles are found from all over the world. And the first writing about crop circles was from year 1678. And Doug and Dave's circles looked really bad.

Crop Circles: Quest for Truth producer Suzanne Taylor is back with the phenomena and now directing her own documentary about the subject. Taylor has been involved with the crop circle community for 15 years, so it is clear that she knows what she's talking about. But can she be objective, too?

Taylor interviews many people from different professions, backgrounds and nationalities sharing with one common interest: the fascination with crop circles. The focus is mainly on crop circle community and this might be also the factor that keeps hard core skeptics away from the film. I guess they would be dismissing it in any case, though.

The wonderful images and shots of circles speak for themselves. What on Earth? shows a lot of still photography and video material about astonishing formations around the world. And that's when the beauty of them comes quite clear: it doesn't even matter if they all are made by humans. The evidence Taylor presents here, is telling another story. I am not buying all of the explanations or theories presented in the film, but it is not even a purpose here.

What on Earth? has a newbie-friendly approach to crop circle phenomena. Although the amount of information can be sometimes exhausting, the 81 minutes is an appropriate duration for a documentary like this. The history of formations is told briefly (but sufficiently) and the story never goes too far from the main point. Suzanne Taylor also doesn't pay too much of attention to UFO aspect, which is a clever decision. Of course the balls of light seen (and videotaped) near the circle areas get mentioned, but the director lets the viewer decide and wonder, how these formations get created. The documentary is also nicely different from your average paranormal documentaries, in many ways. The atmosphere is light, positive and happy, even. There are no mysterious and threatening music, no frightening conspiracy theories.

What on Earth? is like the filmmaker and interviewees themselves – fascinated, amazed and open to accept that we understand only a small part of life, universe and nature.

The DVD release contains also deleted scenes, a tribute to John Mack, a crop circle song, crop circle montage and more. The aspect ratio is 4:3, so no widescreen release unfortunately.