Them

This film is strange, slow, and incoherent. I tried to finish it four times before successfully doing so, as it kept sending me to sleep. There's a lot of scenes with people staring into the distance and not saying much. The concept behind it is rather vague and under-developed. It's certainly different, but not really recommended.

I've waited over a decade scrolling through IMDB to sign in and and leave a review on films I've loved, films I've liked, and films that have left me scratching my head. I have never once been compelled during those hundreds of films to write a review, but here we are. Thank you Them.

I feel compelled in humanitarian way to say this is legitimately one of the worst films I have seen in my forty years around the sun.

It is so bad I'm left speechless as to how to warn you away. Every single aspect of this movie fails: from unmoving plot, to indecipherable premise, to wooden acting, to a somehow pretentious ruse on the audience that we would "get it" if we only could understand.

This is bad and there is nothing to get. It's like playing an M. Night Shayamalan album in reverse only to reveal the lyrics say, the jokes on you. It's not smart. It's not prescient and if you have the misfortune to be reading this now, I'm sorry. I had hopes and dreams once too.

Run away.

This film explains nothing, and both really happens either. There is no plot.

Like it says humans cannot see them anymore, but it doesn't even remotely hint at what "them" are. They were apparently human once? What happened? Like I don't expect to be "spoon fed" even, but sometimes a little bit more story or explanation can make a film make a lot more sense.

Like I get that the stiff acting could be down to them trying to be "off human". But there is so much people standing at windows looking out talking with stiff awkward lines.

About THEM: I hate to dismiss films out of hand but, as an educated viewer, I need more for a satisfying movie experience. I'm a big believer in the notion that in the dramatic arts, showing is better than telling. THEM neither shows nor tells. Note to the filmmakers: A little bit of exposition is not only OK, it's practically required if your business is storytelling.

That sums up my chief complaint with this entire effort: There's no story. I'm not opposed to the occasional foray into Absurdism, but that's not what this is. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF has a story. A DOLL'S HOUSE has a story. Even WAITING FOR GODOT has more of a story than this, and if not a lot more story then certainly a lot more purpose. Everything-is-meaningless-nothing-is-real-life-is-but-a-dream surrealist drivel isn't enough. Simply put, there's just no takeaway here.

The most basic expectation people have when they invest their time in any creative endeavor is that the creators will make some kind of a coherent, discernable point. One gets the feeling the makers are trying, hence two stars. But if there's a point here, I've missed it, and as one not given to missing the point, I'm left to conclude that it's either absent or the filmmakers aren't capable of communicating it.

It turns out the title of the movie THEM has a double meaning, depending on who uses it: from the view of a superior alien race with God-like powers, it refers to humans, whom the aliens control by putting them into a dreamlike state, ostensibly in order to protect them from harming themselves or other humans. From the perspective of humans, it refers, of course, to said aliens.

One day, the brother of the lead alieness decides to wake up a human because, he says, that is what their father would have wanted, the father later on revealed to have died long ago.

Having woken up and effectively attained free will, the human, Daniel, sets into motion a series of events, as he pursues what he really wants (to be back together with his wife before he went into the dream state), which ends up at a great cost to others who are also woken up.

Okay, so the philosophical lesson I take away from this movie is that free will entails at least the possibility that our pursuit of happiness will lead to deep unhappiness. Even if we find happiness, it may come at the expense of the happiness of others, in which case free will leads to the possibility of self-harm or harm to others.

The film compares this, it seems, unfavorably, to a scenario that is utilitarian in the sense that the maximum social good is attained not by maximizing each individual's happiness but by finding a medium in which nobody is truly unhappy, even if that means they are not even aware what they are missing and are essentially deprived of free will.

I cannot help but notice some biblical allegorical undertones here: the "waking up" is very reminiscent of eating from the fruit of knowledge, the brother and sister reminiscent of archangels on opposite sides, and the father may be an allusion to the notion of God itself.

From that angle, the position the movie seems to take can be better understood: humans, born in sin, are liable to destroy themselves if it ever happens that God forsakes them (=the father dies). Better, then, to keep them perpetually in the ignorant but blissful state in which they were before they ate the fruit of knowledge.

I strongly disagree with this authoritarian and patronizing philosophical stance, but that is not why I gave the film a low rating.

As a motion picture, this should not just communicate but entertain. On the latter front, it fails completely: the glacial pace, the halting delivery of lines, occasionally with weird cadences, and the choppy proceedings turn this movie into one hell of a boring experience. I was tempted several times to stop watching, and had to fast forward some self-indulgently lingering static scenes.

Even on the communication front, the movie did not seem to really succeed, judging by so many reviews that profess not to understand what it is about. This matter is not helped by incoherent aspects in the story itself. For example: the aliens arrived on earth, yet they were once humans? The aliens were there for generations running humanity, yet Daniel went into the dream state only as an adult?

The only thing the movie has going for it is nice cinematography, and that is why I did not rate it lower.

For an example of a philosophical science fiction movie with a similar theme but which succeeds spectacularly, see INFINITY CHAMBER (2016). Also, see my explanation/Review of it if the ending is not clear.