Earthling

Earthling starts out as an intriguing film. We're left to begin piecing together the disjointed bits of storytelling to begin this fantastic sci-fi journey. After about an hour we're still being teased with disjointed information and characters who know what they're doing but unfortunately forgot to tell us the viewer what they're doing. They act with meaning and motivation but there is no clear reason why they are acting and talking the way they are. It's all very well to be mysterious and aloof but frankly i got lost and ending up not caring what they were doing. It's like the director watched too many David Lynch films and tried to outdo him. In the end i got it but i really didn't care. It went from strong, to confusing to will this please end. The only saving grace was the lead actor, she was brilliant but even towards the end you could just see her delivering lines and probably wondering what the hell was going on too. It's nice to evoke feelings and emotions in film but at the end of the day it's about entertainment. It wasn't there.

This movie is a disjointed mishmash of things that don't make sense: a meaningless opening, constant, meaningless flashbacks and cuts so big you could sail the Queen Mary through them. Depressing background music. Pointless scenes with no rhyme or reason. Fundamental ideas that we've all seen before - obsessive drawing of pictures from Close Encounters, and symbiotes from Stargate, for example.

The holes in the dialog were so big that at one point I had to rewind to watch the run-up to one scene three times to make sure I hadn't missed something. It turns out I hadn't missed anything - it was either another gaping hole in the dialog or the editor went mad and took a meat axe to it.

If the plot got any vaguer this flick wouldn't have one. It's a low-budget, miserable failure. Save yourself the cost of the video hire. Watching paint dry is more entertaining.

Oh, and don't let the mention of Close Encounters or Stargate mislead you into believing this is actually a sci-fi flick. It isn't. It's more of a weird drama that tries to ask "what makes us human?"

This is a very ambitious and complex sci-fi drama with a low budget. It has some similarities to "Another Earth", but this plot is much more complicated. Imagine a mix of dreamy Sopphia Coppola-scenes and some David Cronenberg-creatures, then add some "Solaris". The slow pace and feeling of the film is very beautiful and hypnotic, like Another Earth. The acting in Earthling is really good, especially the main character, and the plot is very implicit witch kept me interested throughout the whole movie. For instance, no one ever mentions the word "alien" or "planet", you have to keep guessing. This is the typical "Filmfestival-sci-fi-drama".

What a frustrating mess! You know all those 50's science fiction films loaded with stilted, baby-food expository dialogue? Well the writer/director of Earthling did the exact opposite to the extreme. Nothing is explained! An hour and half into the film and the audience is still left wondering who the main characters are, what their motivations are, and exactly what the plot of film is. Apparently the writer thought his audience was able to read his mind like the aliens in his screenplay. There are dozens of plot elements which are presented and then left to dry on the vine without any explanation about how they fit into the story. A few examples: the atmospheric disturbance at the beginning of the film - What caused it?, What was it's purpose? Never explained in the film; At one point, the astronaut's wife is referred to as his sister. Why? And there are many, many more...

Over and over again throughout the film, these little plot points are raised and then dropped without explanation, never to be heard from again. And the characters are barely introduced, sometimes appearing without any indication of who they are or how they fit into the story -- they're never explained, let alone developed..

Then there are the bizarre behaviors of the characters. A bunch of school teachers getting plastered at the local bar after school. Really? A student asking his teacher to take a drag off of a joint? What planet did this take place on? Not earth. These aren't crucial plot points and don't really serve to develop any characters, so why put that in the film? These types of behaviors by protagonists just erode civil society and I don't understand why producers insist on putting them into their films. And what's with all those agonizingly long, drawn-out bathtub scenes? Again they serve no point in the plot or tone of the film.

There was an almost-original story to be told here. As Liford says in the promo summary, "After a mysterious atmospheric event, a small group of people wake up to realize that their entire lives have been a lie. They are in fact aliens disguised as humans. Now they have to make a choice. Live amongst men, or try to find a way back home."

That sounds like an interesting story, but Earthing failed miserably in telling that story. At the bare minimum, a film has got to to get the story told! I generously gave it 3 stars because, without exception, the actors' performances were extraordinary despite what they had to work with. Also, the cinematography was well done.

Triggers: strobe effects, incest, child exploitation, graphic violence, suicide, drug promotion, racist language (including the N-word), racist casting, antisocial behavior by the protagonists.

While this may not appeal to the general public, it is what science fiction can be. Instead of a bunch of intergalactic cowboys facing off with one another, this is a truly thought provoking movie. There are shades of David Lynch in this stark presentation. Several people are suddenly faced with a kind of mass amnesia after an event they can't entirely explain. Because they are humans, they see what as happening to them initially as a type of disease (even epilepsy in one case). Soon they are draw to each other. Part of their problem is that they are such diverse personalities who are filled with distrust. They are drawn to water, particular just off the shore of a small lake where a series of images invade their psyches. They all have growths on their heads, like the beginnings of little deer antlers. They are also losing some of their skin. Things unfold in a really interesting way with tragic consequences, but there is an answer somewhere and it requires a great deal of trust. While this is a highly imperfect film, I appreciated that their reach exceeds their grasp.