Dis­cov­er the strange romance of this alien inva­sion drama

“It’s okay, baby, I’m fine,” says the young man (Nathan Day) to his anx­ious part­ner (Court­nea Hyland) in the open­ing scene of Michael Shumway’s fea­ture debut, Alien­ate. ​“It’s going to be alright.”

All this is shot up close, and could come from any romance. The cou­ple, fol­lowed reluc­tant­ly by the oth­er peo­ple in the house, head out into the sub­ur­ban street – which is lit­tered with human bod­ies. Over­head, a jet plane is engaged in a dog­fight with a space­craft. ​“Now that we’ve got time, I want to talk about what we were talk­ing about ear­li­er,” the young man says to his part­ner as they con­tin­ue walk­ing, ​“We can work on this.” Yet the rela­tion­ship trou­bles hint­ed at in these words are inter­rupt­ed by a laser attack, and the sequence ends with the woman, still alive and ter­ri­fied, lying under the corpse of her beloved.

If Alien­ate begins in medias res, that is just one of sev­er­al alien­ation effects that the film will per­pe­trate upon the view­er, chiefly via time-leap­ing edits, as it con­stant­ly con­fus­es the vehi­cle and tenor of its own cen­tral metaphor. This is hard­ly the first film to exploit aliens for their fig­u­ra­tive­ness. Both Steven Spielbeg’s War of the Worlds and the Strause broth­ers’ Sky­line – to name but two films ref­er­enced in Shumway’s ground-eye view of all-out alien inva­sion – freight­ed their aggres­sive out­siders with con­sid­er­able metaphor­i­cal heft. For in the for­mer, the aliens embod­ied the rav­ages of war on civil­ians, as well (this being Spiel­berg) as the breakup and even­tu­al rein­te­gra­tion of the fam­i­ly; while in the lat­ter, aliens rep­re­sent one man’s anx­i­eties about his impend­ing pater­ni­ty and the world-destroy­ing changes it would bring to his life.

In Alien­ate those extra-ter­res­tri­al invaders sym­bol­ise the forces that dri­ve cou­ples apart, and bring them togeth­er. For as worka­holic David Madi­son (Blake Webb), away on busi­ness, dri­ves inter­state with increas­ing des­per­a­tion to get back to his wife Amy (Tatum Lang­ton) in Salt Lake City, a com­plex series of flash­backs and flash­for­wards reveals both the freefalling break­down of his mar­riage, and the sud­den takeover of the plan­et by mer­ci­less marauders.

En route, David expe­ri­ences a long dark night of the soul when he must, for the first time, envis­age a life apart from Amy, now that he is real­is­ing he may be sep­a­rat­ed from her for­ev­er. The aliens, though a very real pres­ence in the film, seem mere­ly to give phys­i­cal expres­sion to the apoc­a­lyp­tic col­lapse of David and Amy’s cou­ple­dom, and to their fear – a fear felt by so many sin­gle peo­ple, includ­ing David’s work col­league Ryan (Jack Dia­mond) – of dying alone.

This is why David falls in with fel­low fugi­tive Saman­tha (Jaclyn Hales), her­self sep­a­rat­ed after sev­en years of mar­riage, and helps her on her way to (emo­tion­al) res­cue. It is why Amy is seen dis­cussing with her elder­ly neigh­bours the secret of their long and hap­py mar­riage. And it is why both Amy and David tell sto­ries of their adul­tery (when their rela­tion­ship, like their lives right now, were threat­ened by out­siders). Mean­while the couple’s alien­ation from each oth­er, both geo­graph­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal, is under­lined by the film’s very form – the con­stant inter­cut­ting, the chrono­log­i­cal chaos – which keeps this pair apart and at odds with one anoth­er, while also keep­ing the view­er engaged in the busi­ness of reassem­bling the film’s nar­ra­tive puzzle.

Need­less to say, the edit­ing is the film’s strongest asset. Yet amid all the rela­tion­ship dra­ma, the extra-ter­res­tri­als seem mere­ly a dead­ly cat­a­lyst for the human con­di­tion – which is just as well, giv­en that, once they appear and start shoot­ing their ray­guns, these aliens are also a lit­tle on the naff side. Best to view them entire­ly as metaphor.

Alien­ate is avail­able now on DVD cour­tesy of Alti­tude Film Distribution.