"Encounter"

Review of the movie "Encounter" - a drama with Reese Ahmed, which pretends to be science fiction

The director of the successful "The Beast" Michael Pearce sets out to explore the facets of the relationship between fathers and children in the scenery of the invasion of the body snatchers.

There is no time to explain: Malik (Riz Ahmed), under cover of night, climbs into the bedroom of his sons - they live with their mother and stepfather. Quick packs, warm hugs, and now three Musketeers (as their father called their squadron) are driving along the road to the horizon. The reason for the rush is an alien invasion: this time, instead of monsters or anthropomorphic little men with green skin, the Earth is threatened by insects that can get under the wearer's skin and take control of the individual. The boys' mother has already fallen victim to extraterrestrial intelligence, and the father is ready to do everything to prevent children from being offended.

Family relationships against the background of the end of the world in the indie segment just fit into a separate genre: as a rule, this is a subtle and gentle movie, where opposites are reconciled under the yoke of painful and sometimes fatal circumstances. Casey Affleck in "The Light of My Life" protected his daughter in a world where women were gone, in "Burden" Martin Freeman carried the baby through the potholes of the zombie apocalypse. Now the path of survival is being blazed by Michael Pearce, the director who powerfully debuted The Beast and introduced the artist Jesse Buckley to the world. The four-year lull only fueled interest in the director's new project: Peirce managed to combine anxiety, patterns of fairy tales and the motive of forbidden love into one genre ball. This experience of the previous picture suggests that the addition of masculinity, paternity and alien threat in his optics should have happened even more gracefully. Here it is worth making a reservation and warning: any further reasoning about "Collision" without revealing the plot twist is meaningless. Therefore, if you are one of those who are afraid of spoilers, then it is better to close the text.

We started the conversation with the director's debut for a reason: it is no longer a coincidence, but a pattern that Pierce deftly juggles audience expectations. In The Beast, the thriller gradually replaces mysticism, but here everything happens the other way around, and science fiction gives way to social drama. As if in the same race, Netflix and Amazon Prime streams almost simultaneously release post-imprisonment adaptation films (noteworthy, Apple TV + and Palmer were the first in the race). In Unforgiven, Sandra Bullock's heroine tries to find a sister and get used to the routine after 20 years in prison, and in Clash, Malik, who has fallen under a military tribunal, fights PTSD and seeks to save children from a non-existent threat. Such castling in a different cut could look like a plot twist to the envy of Fincher and Shyamalan, but here it rather turns out to be a deception of the viewer caught in the marketing.

And the point is not even that insects, along with rodents, are the favorite subject of hallucinogenic scenes by filmmakers, and zoopathic delirium is an existing diagnosis. Unfortunately, outside of the genre nerve of the alien invasion, the story falls apart. The idea, beautiful on paper, that the very contact must first be found with relatives, and then negotiate with aliens, is painfully smeared across the screen. Functional service and a sense of duty are equated with fatherhood: Malik needs to protect the country / children / planet - emphasize the necessary. The anti-militarist message is also clearer thanks to the choice of a Pakistani actor for the role of the Marine: he can hardly painlessly integrate into the military system.

But good intentions and scenario assumptions (some of the sons' actions cannot be explained by any motivation) do not add up to one common story, and remain as notes in the margins of a sluggishly written script. Reese Ahmed seems to be walking in a circle of the same obsession, but at the same time his anxiety does not contribute to empathy. It is hoped that this misfire in the filmography of Michael Pearce is caused by the policy of streaming services and the director will still be able to show his competence.

This article was sponsored by Giang Pham