Landscape with Invisible Hand
MGM
*This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.*
Cory Finley’s Landscape with Invisible Hand has arrived at theatres with seemingly no buzz, even if the film premiered at the Sundance International Film Festival with decent reviews. An adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s book of the same name, the film follows Adam Campbell (Asante Blackk) and his family grappling with an alien invasion that drastically changes their way of life.
The aliens themselves, the Vuvvs, have been observing Earth since the 1950s but have recently entered the atmosphere to create a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and aliens. At school, Adam meets Chloe Marsh (Kylie Rogers), who recently moved to his town, and the two fall in love. In trying to get out of debt and help Adam’s mother (Tiffany Haddish) out, Chloe and Adam begin to broadcast their lives to the Vuvvs, which proves itself more complicated when the aliens suspect they’re no longer in love.
That’s all anyone needs to know before venturing into Landscape with Invisible Hand – the lesser, the better. The film has taken so many sharp directions through its 105-minute runtime that it’s almost a miracle that it turned out this good. Some aspects of the movie are weaker than others, especially Adam’s relationship with his distant father (William Jackson Harper). However, the movie's core works deftly balance strong themes with quirky comedy. Sometimes, the tonal shift is too abrupt, especially during its opening moments, where a teacher kills himself after learning Vuvv’s course curriculum will replace him.
The entire alien-replacing curriculum storyline could’ve been more fleshed out, especially when audiences progressively see how the Vuvv perceives humans and what they calculate out of the equation to give them the best curriculum possible. If humans want a job, they must learn the Vuvv language, which is far more difficult and indecipherable for a human brain than the aliens think. One scene where Mr. Marsh (Josh Hamilton) and his son, Hunter (Michael Gandolfini), attempt to learn the language by taking a Duolingo-esque course is the movie at its best. A shame that the comedic momentum grinds to a halt when they get into an argument with Adam’s mother as soon as she arrives.
These tonal shifts make Landscape with Invisible Hand an uneven overall experience, and it gets increasingly frustrating when plot points are seemingly introduced and then dropped at the last second. Still, the core of the film remains strong amidst the inconsistencies, and it is consistently gripping. Whenever the movie takes a massive swing, there’s never a moment in which an audience member will distance themselves from the movie, but become more invested into the story, wanting to know what will happen next.
Some of it is side-splitting, occasionally shocking, but always remains human. This complex journey is beautifully shot by cinematographer Lyle Vincent and scored with gusto by Michael Abels, who keeps hitting one home run after the next with his film compositions. There’s an eerie familiarity to his score – especially when he plays with the traditional tones that represent an alien invasion – but it’s also vastly different than anything else he had done before. When speaking with him for Awards Radar at the beginning of the year, that’s exactly what he had teased, and he was right.
The human core is also wondrously portrayed by Asante Blackk and Kylie Rogers, who are ones to watch in the future. Rogers has been in the film industry for a long time, but hasn’t had her time to shine, until this year with Beau is Afraid and now Landscape with Invisible Hand. She shares incredible chemistry with Blackk, who is the heart and soul of why the film works so well. Haddish is also excellent as Adam’s mother, while Hamilton and Gandolfini provide much-needed comic relief in the film’s funniest moments.
In the end, while it doesn’t always work, Landscape with Invisible Hand still proves to be a memorable film thanks to its incredibly ambitious storytelling swings. In this landscape of studio-driven movies that feel more and more AI-generated, it’s almost a miracle to see a movie like this being greenlighted and released in (unfortunately empty) theaters. Its performances from Blackk and Rogers keep the film engaging, despite its narrative pitfalls. If quirky little movies fancy anyone reading this, then give Landscape with Invisible Hand a chance. It deserves it.