Close Encounters of the Third Kind

In 1977, French scientist Claude Lacombe, along with interpreter and cartographer David Laughlin, examines Flight 19—a group of United States Navy aircraft that vanished over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945—now found immaculate and abandoned in the Sonoran Desert. They later learn that the SS Cotopaxi has similarly been found abandoned in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Meanwhile, near Indianapolis, two airplanes narrowly avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object (UFO). At a rural home outside Muncie, Indiana, three-year-old Barry Guiler wakes to find his toys operating on their own and the fridge ransacked. He follows a trail outside before his mother, Jillian, catches him. Widespread power outages occur throughout the area, forcing electric utility lineman Roy Neary to investigate. En route, Roy experiences a close encounter with a UFO, and when it flies over his truck, it lightly burns the side of his face with its lights. The UFO takes off with three others in the sky, as Roy and police officers unsuccessfully pursue them by road. Roy becomes fascinated with the UFOs and obsessed with a subliminal image of a mountainous shape, repeatedly making models of it. His increasingly erratic and eccentric behavior worries his wife Ronnie and their three children, and his friends and neighbors ostracize him. Ronnie eventually leaves with the children after Roy brings dirt, bricks, and other debris into their home to sculpt a large scale replica of the mountain. Jillian also begins compulsively sketching the same mountain. Soon after, she is terrorized in her home by a UFO which descends from the clouds. She fights off aggressive attempts by unseen beings to enter the home, but in the chaos, Barry is abducted. Lacombe, Laughlin, and a group of United Nations experts continue to investigate increasing UFO activity and strange, related occurrences. Witnesses in Dharamsala, Northern India report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical phrase. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space, but receive only a seemingly meaningless repeating series of numbers in response. Laughlin eventually recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates, which point to Devils Tower near Moorcroft, Wyoming. The US Army evacuates the area around Devils Tower, planting false reports in the media that a train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, while actually preparing a secret landing site for the UFOs. Seeing the mountain on the news, Roy and Jillian recognize it as the one they have been visualizing. Despite the evacuation order, they, along with others who have been experiencing the visions, set out for Devils Tower, but are intercepted by the Army. Lacombe interviews Roy, who is unable to explain his compulsion to reach the mountain beyond seeking answers. While the others are escorted away, Roy and Jillian escape and eventually reach the mountain site just as UFOs appear in the night sky. The specialists there begin to communicate with the UFOs—which gradually appear by the dozens—by using light and sound on a large electrical billboard. An enormous mothership eventually lands and seemingly conveys to the researchers a tonal means of communication. A hatch opens, from which the mothership releases Flight 19 pilots, Cotopaxi sailors, and Barry, who reunites with Jillian, along with various other humans and some animals, all having not aged since they were taken. Seeing Roy, Lacombe suggests preparing him for inclusion in the government's select group of potential visitors to the mothership. The extraterrestrials finally emerge from the mothership and select Roy to join their travels. After Roy enters the mothership, one of the extraterrestrials pauses for a few moments with the humans. Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs that correspond to the five-note tonal phrase. The extraterrestrial responds in kind, smiles, and returns to its ship, which takes to the sky.

Plot from Close Encounters of the Third KindCC BY-SA 4.0