Jeremy Corbell’s Sleeping Dog: UFO whistleblower chaos, CIA fear, and Lazar lore

Sleeping Dog is a full-tilt UFO documentary blending whistleblower testimony, CIA paranoia, and legacy program mythology into a chaotic personal portrait.

It focuses primarily on Jeremy Corbell, one of the most prominent American UFO journalists and advocates out there.

Right at the start of the film we see a young Corbell, who the documentary tracks over the course of his career as a UFO journalist for the best part of a decade.

His younger self at the start of the movie proclaims – “it’s a sickness bro,” speaking into the camera of his UFO obsession, “it’s a sickness.”

Sleeping Dog gets off to a shapeshifting start and never drops its relentless pace, functioning somewhat as a biographical movie for Corbell, detailing the frenetic pace of life as a UFO journalist and whistleblower protector.

Directed by Michael Lazovsky, the piece takes a montage effect, reminiscent of UK documentary maker Adam Curtis, save for the fact that Corbell draws on his own direct interview snippets.

The medley of footage includes voicemails, testimonies, even fixing ghost flushes in toilets.

Vibing with retro aesthetic and paired with haunting new-age sound, upon watching Sleeping Dog you’re faced with clarity for Corbell's beloved subject but also with a head full of melted lead. There is a lot to stew over.

Potency of words

While the footage is impressive, it’s more so Corbell's conviction that hits home.

I do not know what UFOs are. I do not know what they represent to humanity. Ask your priest. Ask a scientist. I am a tattooed, bearded journalist that has a great mentor. I am not qualified to answer your question.

A major foundation of the documentary is how it explores Corbell spending hours interviewing eccentric aviator John Lear.

While not dismissing the now deceased pilot outright, he does say, “It was a constant barrage and a lot of it was bullshit.”

What is crucial though, is that Corbell doesn’t outright dismiss everything witnesses say.

Lear unleashed “spot-on” documents about Area 51 in the late 1980s, and Corbell went “right into the viper’s pit.”

One particularly perplexing moment, though, is Lear’s claims of “the greys controlling the soulsuckers on the moon,” which is fittingly debunked by Corbell, and this is crucial for giving Sleeping Dog some binary oppositions – what could be real, and what’s definitely not.

Other important individuals on Corbell’s journey are Bob Lazar, who claims that between late 1988 and early 1989, he was hired as a physicist to reverse-engineer alien spacecraft for the US military, retrieving crashed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs or UFOs) and reverse-engineering non-human technology.

“You keep pushing further and further, and I do not think that is a good idea,” warns Bob Lazar in a chilling phone call on a nauseously dark handycam.

Collapsing underneath it all

As we witness plentiful footage of Corbell falling apart under the weight of pressure, much gratitude is given to mentor George Knapp, who has helped ground Corbell along the way. Knapp provides a valuable anchor, “an island of sanity,” as Corbell describes him.

There is a moment near the end of the doc where we see George Knapp laughing off the countless death threats over the last 40 years. Wife, mom, death threats are “over the edge,” Knapp says.

He reveals he had his phone tapped in a TV station’s newsroom, and was visited and intimidated without a warrant.

Then there is Corbell’s mother. She provides the comforting layer, but claims she is “scared to death” and “petrified” about the CIA and FBI tussling over him, and even believes that he may have a hit on him. She reveals that agents have advised him not to go into parking lots. Do not drive alone or be alone.

We see the journey of the protagonist when he is determined, frazzled, and brazen in equal measure. Regardless of his mental state, Corbell fundamentally stands up for being a journalist.

“I am supposed to be reporting in America. I should not be threatened by our intelligence agencies, corporations, and individuals. The problem is I have been threatened by all of the above,” Corbell concludes.

Sleeping Dog is available now on Amazon Prime.