TIFF 2021: Encounter
TIFF 2021Encounter works better as a probe into the American militarised national psyche than it is a character study of Riz Ahmed’s troubled alien hunter and rough father figure. The opening sequence is a visually slick sci-fi intro that illustrates the arrival of alien microbes into earth’s biosphere and follows them right up the food chain and into the human bloodstream. Then, boom, you’ve got Riz Ahmed’s character, Malik, declaring that he studies these things and is trying to evade them because they have infected half of the population. He swoops into his ex-wife’s home and liberates his two kids in the middle of the night because his ex has become a host to these threatening alien parasites. And that’s the set up for what is essentially a road movie seeking some sort of safety.
Michael Pearce’s film offers some genuine moments that reflect the difficulty of a military parent trying to connect with his kids following a long deployment. Young kids often only have an image of a dad, not an actual dad. And sometimes, Dad’s returning from long tours have low-level parenting skills and a confused sense of children’s needs or routine because the child is at a completely different point in their development since when the father was last present. Hardly the film’s centrepiece, but it’s an element that works pretty well. Encounter’s road trip with Malik and his boys nicely exhibits this unstable dynamic yet still speaks to the existing emotional bond that is still there in spite of the confused parameters and duties of the father role.
However, kids being able to transition to life on the road without a proper bedtime is the least of the stability issues that Encounter actually cares about. The script – co written by Pearce and Joe Barton whose work includes iBoy and The Ritual – features an alien invasion of sorts, but this invasion is actually emblematic of a greater infection of toxicity: the militarised attitude of the American public. Malik, himself, is a former marine and struts around at times as an alpha male whom everyone else should listen to – a confidence that seems to come from his days in the military. He has violent confrontations with a traffic officer and a homeowner who both pull guns on him. Later, the homeowner’s sons hunt them down, but they do so dressed as fully armed weekend commandos. It’s as if the second amendment validated these two goobers’ semi-automatic weapons permits and vigilante-membership cards. These guys are lifted directly from footage of the January 6 march on the Capitol. Encounter posits that the attitude of “might is right” justice is the side-effect of a parasitic form of thinking – a toxic militarised mentality hosted by the American public.
Encounter is a decent attempt at taking on alien invasion, parenting, and road trips. In fact, the first half of the feature likens itself to a not too distant cousin of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Starman. Unfortunately, the film pulls the rug out from under its sci-fi footing as Malik’s home base, research papers, and shooting-star sightings all disappear from the film’s consciousness. Furthermore, the film twists up its ethics by the time Octavia Spencer’s character gets involved. It’s not clear whether or not Malik is even a worthwhile moral compass for the film. Love for his kids, PTSD, criminal escapades, child endangerment, and extensive gunplay completely fold the film’s narrative and crumples into a messy ball. Riz Ahmed is a compelling performer whose performance draws one in, and it appears that director Michael Pearce would have us root for him, too. However, when Encounter comes to a clear stopping point, the emotional finale is left as an unclear, unsatisfying jumble that proposes a redemption that doesn’t fit the path we’ve been on. Encounter is certainly not a mess, but it confuses its own identity along the way and gives way to some messy justification of things. If you follow the beats of the movie, you might end up satisfied, but if you think much about this journey, there’s not much to feel good about.