Review: Encounter’s Take on an Alien Threat Defies Genres, If Not Expectations

As alien invasions go, the one that opens Michael Pearce’s Encounter is fairly low-key. Bright meteor-like flashes cut across the night sky. Close-up shots of squirming insects and human bloodstreams infected with clouds of swarming parasites suggest a quietly multiplying bug menace. But what Pearce doesn’t show is made up for in the fervid imagination of his raggedy, impassioned protagonist, Malik (Riz Ahmed), who’s frantically planning to go off the grid to get away from whatever the meteors have delivered to Earth.

An ex-Marine who hasn’t seen his young sons, Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada), in a couple of years, Malik is convinced that the planet is under a species-ending threat from “non-terrestrial microorganisms” that are taking over people’s minds. He believes that the only way to keep his boys safe is to get them to a “base” in the Nevada desert, and that the only way to do so is to get them away from his ex-wife and her new husband, both of whom, it’s implied, have been infected. He calls it a rescue, but the F.B.I. calls it kidnapping.

At first, Jay and Bobby are thrilled by what Malik tells them is a fun but top-secret mission. As Malik drives far into the desert, though, his parenting skills and hold on reality become increasingly fraught. These scenes inside the car result in some of Encounter’s most dramatic moments, but it’s impossible to imagine them working nearly as well without Ahmed, who vividly and empathetically captures Malik’s wounded soul. Chauhan is also impressive as the sharp-eyed comics-obsessed pre-adolescent whose worshipful view of his father as a rule-breaking warrior begins to curdle as their journey to nowhere turns chaotic.

Pearce uses directorial sleight of hand for the first third or so of Encounter by restricting us to Malik’s perspective. Every little thing that we see from his point of view—from news footage of street riots to some suited-up beekeepers who are watching him a bit too closely—serves as evidence of a fast-moving catastrophe. The highway patrol officer who pulls Malik over and bullies him for apparently no reason seems to be doing so under alien control—and an eerie zoom toward the officer’s face reveals parasites swarming inside his eyeball.

But it isn’t long before it becomes clear that any threats that Malik perceives are in fact terrestrially based. The manhunt to rescue his sons ramps up as his mental state and planning capabilities deteriorate, suggesting that he could kill them and himself in the belief that he’s saving them from alien infestation. This pivot toward seeing Malik as less misunderstood hero than paranoiac who’s broken from reality also signals the film’s feint away from sci-fi and toward kidnapping thriller, and it may come as a disappointment to those expecting Ahmed to do battle with insectoid beasties, especially given the rote machinations of this stretch.

Racing to head off potential violence on Malik’s part is his parole officer, Hattie (Octavia Spencer), and the head of the F.B.I.’s kidnapping task force, Shep (Rory Cochrane). It’s around here that the filmmakers make plain their commitment to Malik as a troubled but ultimately heroic character, at which point the tension inherent in his internal struggle between wartime trauma and sanity begins to fade. In what feels like something of a cheat move, Encounter even contrives to provide a couple of human baddies—trigger-happy Three Percenter militia men—for Malik to rescue his boys from in order to further prove his bona fides.

Encounter benefits from unexpectedly epic cinematography, courtesy of Benjamin Kracun, who also lensed Pearce’s loveably weird Beast. Especially of note is the conclusion, shot on wide-open desert plains and an eerily empty mining community, all of which amplifies the apocalyptic struggle occurring inside a man’s mind. But it’s difficult to ignore the film’s troublingly naïve take on Malik’s mental trauma, which is presented as both serious enough to endanger even the people he loves but also relatively simple to resolve. The film also stumbles with a climax involving a hostage negotiation, a trope so tired at this point that it might have been better to just let Malik finish out the story by actually fighting some aliens.