Since Jack Finney’s “The Physique Snatchers” was first printed 70 years in the past, display screen variations — official and unofficial alike — have taken place in small-town USA, Me Decade San Francisco, a army base, highschool and so forth. All had a gist in widespread: humanity being infiltrated and co-opted by a shape-shifting invasive power from outer house. Loosely enjoying on that theme, Zach Clark’s “The Becomers” provides a brand new wrinkle, in that this time the body-hopping entities don’t essentially intend conquest. They simply wish to co-exist, peacefully. Nevertheless it seems they might have chosen the mistaken planet and/or species, as a result of they uncover at present’s mankind is probably too messed as much as be well worth the bother.
That’s premise for the form of sly, deadpan absurdism Clark goals for right here. However regardless of its fantastical hook, this episodic narrative lands in need of the curiously winsome black comedy quirkiness its writer-director achieved with prior options “Little Sister” and “White Reindeer.” A form of shaggy canine story whose attraction wanes as one steadily realizes it’s unlikely to go anyplace specifically, “The Becomers” is equally gentle as sci-fi, spoof and sociopolitical satire. It’s off-kilter sufficient to catch one’s consideration, however ultimately too underdeveloped to strongly reward it.
Russell Mael of the long-running cult band Sparks commences issues with voiceover narration as our anonymous, genderless protagonist, relating a backstory — thoughout this movie’s present-tense progress — of life on a dying dwelling planet. Finally they and their lover had been chosen for evacuation, touring by way of the cosmos in separate journey pods.
That ends in the narrator touchdown in a forested space of Illinois, the place the crashed spacecraft’s pink smoke attracts a hunter (Conrad Dean), to his misfortune. He turns into the primary human physique occupied by mentioned alien, staggering zombie-like to a stopped automotive the place a girl in misery (Isabel Alamin’s Francesca) is about to provide delivery — a substantial inconvenience for all events involved. Discovering to her alarm that this hopeful rescuer has glowing aquamarine eyes, she turns into Vessel No. 2.
Studying learn how to move as human, “Francesca” checks right into a Motel 6, absorbing language and tradition by way of the room’s TV — even when the channel she watches appears to be a parodied Fox Information. That course of goes easily sufficient till it turns into obvious that police are looking for “her” (the discarded new child has been discovered), and entrance desk clerk Gene (Frank V. Ross) grows a bit of too interested by this mysterious lone visitor. Our hero/ine should go on the lam once more, soliciting a experience from a suburban housewife (Molly Plunk) whose physique and residential are then usurped.
This seems to be a poor selection, as a result of it emerges after a trend that Carol and husband Gordon (Mike Lopez) aren’t simply charitably inclined evangelical Christians. They’re additionally fanatical conspiracy theorists in a QAnon mode who’re already neck-deep in a legal plot they assume will fight a “devil-worshipping elite.” That tremendously complicates our narrator’s reunion with “my lover,” a neon-pink-eyed changeling who turns up in a single human guise (a bus driver performed by Jacquelyn Haas), after which switches to a different. Making an attempt to keep up a low profile, the duo as a substitute discover themselves embroiled in intrigue involving the Governor (Keith Kelly), FBI and nationwide media.
There may be actual potential within the notion of house creatures looking for asylum, solely to search out themselves swept into the extra cultish extremes of our weird political second, which in fact make no sense to them. However “The Becomers” by no means fairly whips itself as much as a adequate stage of wackiness or critique to totally seize that chance. Its closest prior display screen corollary is much less a “Physique Snatchers” variation than John Sayles’ “Brother From One other Planet,” however with out that movie’s heat (or a central efficiency as interesting as Joe Morton’s) to ballast the tepidly quirky humor. The voiceover textual content Mael recites has a droll mixture of banality and surrealism that nothing really depicted right here comes shut sufficient to amplifying.
The exquisite-corpse nature of the identity-swapping premise retains Clark’s movie diverting, although ultimately, it leaves too slight an impression for such a daring conceit. There’s not sufficient felt emotion right here to make the extraterrestrial fugitive lovers’ plight appear touching, because it’s finally meant, and the social commentary parts promise greater than they ship. Competently acted and crafted, “The Becomers” is a intelligent concept that feels prefer it’s nonetheless simply being sketched out in terms of a detailed.
Darkish Star Photos opened the Chicago-shot indie at NYC’s Cinema Village this weekend, with bookings in different cities to observe, and an On Demand launch Sept. 24.
