This was a movie that drew my interest as soon as I heard about it, but my TBW list got busy in the run-up to the Oscars, and I didn’t get a chance to see it until now. Gripping film anchored by great central performances.
In the middle of the night, Marine Corps veteran Malik, comes to his ex-wife’s home and wakes his two young sons with the prospect of a “road trip.” Quickly, though, he reveals that it goes deeper than that: alien parasites, transmitted through insect bites, are taking over people’s minds, and he needs to get the boys somewhere safe.
If you read this blog, it probably didn’t take you long to figure out that I’m a big genre fan, and of course I love straightforward genre stuff: your Lord of the Rings, your Star Wars, your Avengers. But I also really like less-obvious entries that use genre trappings to tell down-to-earth human stories against a more fantastical backdrop—something like In the Flesh, which follows a family struggling to make a new normal after a zombie apocalypse. Encounter is closer to the latter. There’s lights-in-the-sky fascination, the creeping horror of an everyday entity (in this case, insects) becoming menacing, and the psychological-thriller paranoia of knowing anyone could be infected. But at the heart of it, it’s about a divorced, absent dad badly trying to be there for his sons in the middle of a terrifying situation.
The longer the film goes on, through assorted twists and revelations, the more these relationships take precedence over the aliens and action. Malik is a guy who’s clearly struggling. Since leaving the Marine Corps, he hasn’t been able to be there for his boys, and the early scenes of the “road trip” bristle with his forced-cheerful overcompensation and his barely-veiled contempt for the boys’ new stepdad. In the pressure cooker of their situation, he veers between treating them like kids he has to protect and fellow soldiers who have to follow his orders, which is stressful for 10-year-old Jay and can be frightening for 8-year-old Bobby.
It’s a film that has quite a bit more to say than I would have expected going in, and I’m still not sure if all of it fully works. But it brings character drama, psychological horror, and sci-fi intrigue in spades, building in suspense until a climactic finish. A week later, I’m still turning it over in my mind and thinking about all its implications.
This is a strong star turn for Riz Ahmed, who plays Malik with a fascinating combination of twitchiness unsteadiness and dogged determination. He also has the job of shepherding the performances of Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada, playing Jay and Bobby, and he gives both young actors a solid fulcrum to respond to. Chauhan delivers really well as the conflicted Jay, and Geddada is equal parts charming and sympathetic as the innocent Bobby. The film also features an able, understated performance from Octavia Spencer.
Warnings
Violence, disturbing images, language, drinking/smoking, and strong thematic elements (including PTSD.)
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