‘We had a very high BS meter’: Netflix’s investigation into ‘real-life’ alien interlopers unironically had to draw the line somewhere

Even if the chances of Earth being the only planet in the entirety of infinite time and space to possess sentient life are exceedingly thin, being convinced that little green men in spaceships are regularly beaming down to see what’s going on is an entirely different matter, although Netflix series Encounters has approached its subjects from an intriguing standpoint.

Director Yon Motskin admitted that he wasn’t a believer before he signed on to helm the episodic hit that quickly became one of the streaming service’s most-watched offerings, but his entire outlook was changed after dealing with both the eyewitnesses and their accounts firsthand.

Unironically, though, Encounters did have to draw the line somewhere when it came to credulity, with the filmmaker revealing to ComicBook that there was always a focus on whether somebody’s account got a little too far-fetched, even within the context of supposed UFO visitations.

“We had a very, very high BS meter, so to speak. I shouldn’t call it that. We had a very, very high threshold for credibility, and it was important to me that anyone that told us their story, we wanted to believe. And I would say every single person except for one that we interviewed, I believed that they believed, and that’s all that’s important to me. We’re not out there saying, what happened really happened or what happened didn’t happen. We’re not out to prove or debunk. We’re just presenting stories of people that believe and experience this otherworldly thing.”

It’s always a benefit for any documentarian to buy into the stories they’re being told, a sentiment that even applies to a Netflix original about alleged incidents involving interlopers from far beyond the stars.