Plot
An alien spaceship crashes near Searchlight, Nevada, about 150 miles outside of Las Vegas. Project Moon Dust, a secret Defense Department unit led by Henry Burke (Ciarán Hinds) and one of his young unnamed task forces, arrives in black helicopters. Men in Black seize the ship and search for its passengers.
Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) is a former mob get-away driver who drives a cab to avoid returning to jail. One of his passengers is Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), a failed scientist who is in Las Vegas to speak at a UFO convention at the Planet Hollywood hotel.
After resisting two thugs who seek his services for a mob boss, Bruno finds two teenagers, Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig), in his cab. They offer $15,000 to drive to a certain destination. Burke's men follow the cab; Bruno believes that the government agents are more mob thugs, and evades them with his driving skills. Seth's ability to vary his molecular density helps the group to escape.
When they arrive at an abandoned house, Bruno follows them out of concern and curiosity. The teenagers retrieve the device they were looking for within a hidden underground laboratory, but the three are attacked by a "Siphon" (Tom Woodruff, Jr.), a powerful armored alien assassin. During the attack Seth is knocked unconscious by a strong blast. They escape into the cab and Jack demands to know what is going on. The Siphon pursues the group until its spaceship crashes into a train and the creature is wounded. The three again escape Burke's agents, in part due to Sara's incredibly strong empathy, telepathy clairvoyant, and telekinetic abilities.
Bruno brings Seth and Sara to Dr. Friedman at the UFO convention, who realizes that the teenagers are what she has been searching for and joins the group. There, the teenagers explain to Bruno and Friedman that they are from a dying distant world three thousand light years from Earth. Its government intends to invade Earth, despite the idea being unpopular among the majority of their race, so that their kind may survive. Seth and Sara's parents are scientists who sought a way to save their planet without invasion but were arrested before completing their experiment. The teenagers came to retrieve the successful results, but the alien government sent the assassin to stop them. To save both worlds, they must retrieve their spaceship and return home. Fellow UFOlogist and conspiracy theorist Dr. Donald Harlan (Garry Marshall) tells them that the spaceship was taken to the secret California government base Witch Mountain. The group arrives at the base but are captured; Burke orders that the teenagers be prepared for vivisection, but feels that no one will believe the adults.
The Siphon attacks Witch Mountain and battles the soldiers, allowing Bruno and Friedman to infiltrate the base and free Seth and Sara. They launch the ship, escape through the mountain's tunnels, and finally kill the assassin who has stowed away on the spaceship. The teenagers give Bruno and Friedman a tracking device that will allow the aliens to always find them, tearfully wish them farewell, and return to their home world, hoping to help rebuilt it somehow.
Bruno and Friedman become successful authors of Race to Witch Mountain: A True Story. They promote their book and knowledge on the UFO convention circuit, explaining that the publicity protects them from government reprisal. As they leave a convention the alien device activates, implying that the humanoid alien teenagers may be returning to Earth.
Read more about this topic: Race To Witch Mountain
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“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)