With two recent Congressional Hearings on UFOs, the establishment of both a Pentagon-run UFO office and an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) study group by NASA, the world is feeling more and more like a science fiction movie every day — and it's about to get much weirder.
I have been researching UFOs for over 25 years. I've read almost every book, seen almost every documentary, and have personally interviewed hundreds of people claiming to have seen UFOs. Hell, I've even interviewed former — possibly still active ... — intelligence officials who have claimed to have worked on UFO programs within the United States that have retrieved wreckage from crashed flying saucers. And if there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that something is most definitely happening in our skies — and it's happening now more than ever.
To put it bluntly: UFOs are hot right now, and that's proven by the dozens of UFO-related documentaries that have recently dropped or will be dropping within weeks or days of you reading this. With my personal interest in the topic, I thought I'd help you save some time, sift through the mysterious muck, and find the best UFO-centric documentaries and series invading streaming platforms right now and in early 2025.
Investigation Alien
Investigation Alien follows investigative journalist George Knapp. Knapp is best known for his work with KLAS, a prominent news station in Las Vegas. He's been on the UFO beat for many years, racking up some of the highest-rated news segments in the history of the network.
In 1989, Knapp broke the controversial story of a man named Bob Lazar, a physicist who claimed to have worked at a secret facility in Nevada that attempted to reverse-engineer an alien craft. That facility was a facility called Site 4, which was an offshoot of a little place you might know better as Area 51. That's right: George Knapp helped put Area 51 on the map.
Fast forward to 2024 and Knapp has now embarked on a mission to uncover evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Investigation Alien delves into various subtopics of the UFO mystery, including cattle mutilations in Oregon, an alien invasion on a Brazilian island, to underwater UFO bases and possible time traveling aliens from the future. The series is fast-paced, rich in both testimony and evidence, and blends a healthy dose of skepticism with open-minded curiosity, leaving viewers to ponder the ever-evolving UFO mystery and our relationship to it.
Investigation Alien is now streaming on Netflix.
Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality
As people and governments around the world come to terms with the reality of the UFO phenomenon, top experts in science, philosophy, religious studies, and more are grappling with its implications for humanity. Within that new paradigm, Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality challenges our understanding of history, a possible non-human intelligence, and the future. With a compassionate interviewing format and stunning recreations of UFO events, the series looks at some of the latest evidence and theories on UFOs.
In the first episode we are introduced to Mario Woods, a former Air Force Security Police Officer, who, in 1977, had a profound UFO encounter at a nuclear missile facility that left a lasting impact on him and his sense of reality. It's both a stunning and harrowing event that truly belongs in a movie — but it's not. It's real life for Mario, and we get a microscopic look at what the event meant for his life moving forward.
We also hear from more than half a dozen PhD professionals who walk us through the UFO subject in their respective fields, offering fresh perspectives on how society will inevitably be reshaped by the UFO presence, and where we truly reside in the cosmos.
Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality will stream on Apple TV and Amazon Prime starting Dec. 30. For more on Cosmosis, watch my interview with co-creator Kelly Chase.
Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown
If you're looking for a big-budget, slick overview of basically the entire history of UFOs, this is the docuseries for you. We meet everyone from Garry Nolan, Stanford University Professor, to Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, as well as those who have experienced UFO phenomena such as Whitley Strieber (made famous by his book Communion) and Jay Christopher King, founder of the Experiencer Group, which works with and supports dialogue amongst those who've claimed otherworldly encounters and abductions.
This series truly runs the gamut when it comes to the official study of UFOs by the United States government, as well as those in the civilian world who have chosen to dedicate their lives to uncovering a truth for themselves without any sort of officialdom painted over it. The series moves very quick, jams in tons of documented information on UFOs, and catches the viewer up to speed with everything that has been going on in the past eight years as UFOs really began to hit the public consciousness like never before. This is definitely a series I would show to anyone new to the subject who may want to just dip their toes into the and mysterious waters of the UFO question.
Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown is now streaming on MGM+, as well as MGM+ via Prime Video subscription.
The Program
The Program delves into the bipartisan congressional efforts to uncover the United States government's knowledge of UFOs. It features exclusive interviews with high-ranking insiders, including military and intelligence officers, scientists, and politicians who claim that shadowy programs with no oversight have retrieved, studied, reverse-engineered, and even weaponized technology from possible “"non-human" craft.
Building upon his previous films The Phenomenon and Moment of Contact, director James Fox's documentary goes directly behind the scenes of recent congressional hearings on UFOs and spans the globe to ask the inevitable question: are we alone? After watching The Program, you may be convinced that you have the answer.
The Program will stream on Apple TV and Amazon Prime on Dec. 18. For more on The Program, watch my interview with director James Fox.
The Alien Perspective
In 1989, ten years before the Blair Witch Project, a young filmmaker and found-footage genre pioneer Dean Alioto released an obscure movie named The McPherson Tape (aka The Alien Abduction). The found footage film depicted an entire family being harassed and abducted by aliens in real-time through the lens of a home video. Initially released as a hoax-like video, it gained cult status and for decades, many in the UFO community thought it was real. Fast forward to 2025 and Alioto is truly going for realism in his latest documentary, The Alien Perspective.
The Alien Perspective delves into the UFO and alien questions not from a human perspective, but perhaps for the first time ever, from the perspective of the alien intelligence(s) itself. With unique interviews with members of NASA, Harvard and Oxford professors, and both civilian and military UFO witnesses, they all hypothesize the motivations and reasons why extraterrestrials might be visiting our planet and interacting with us. It's a powerful outlier from the other documentaries on this list, using the alien perspective to make us all feel more human.
The Alien Perspective sill Stream on Apple TV and Amazon Prime on Jan. 8, 2025.
Each of these documentaries brings something fresh and timely to the ever-elusive UFO mystery. More importantly, they all let us comfortably live in that mystery without being too preachy or sensational. While I have no doubt your eyes will be glued to the screen watching these documentaries, they will almost immediately make you want to touch grass, look up, and stare out into the universe. And you never know if it might be that pivotal time where something, or someone, finally stares back.
