Encounter – first look review

A film I find myself think­ing about a lot is Jeff Nichols’ Take Shel­ter, in which Michael Shan­non plays a father plagued by apoc­a­lyp­tic visions which lead him to con­struct a large bunker beneath their prop­er­ty in Ohio. The ques­tion hangs over the film as to whether Cur­tis’ pre­mo­ni­tions are real or a symp­tom of men­tal ill­ness; it’s a beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing end-of-days dra­ma that reg­u­lar­ly springs to mind when­ev­er I have a night­mare or see a par­tic­u­lar­ly over­cast sky.

Watch­ing Michael Pearce’s sec­ond fea­ture Encounter, I was remind­ed of Nichols’ work – unfor­tu­nate­ly because it’s a bet­ter film which deals with sim­i­lar sub­ject matter.

Riz Ahmed plays ex-marine Mal­ick Kahn, who appears to be on some sort of covert mis­sion con­cern­ing extra-ter­res­tri­al par­a­sites that are invad­ing the world via swarms of insects. He trav­els to the home of his ex-wife Piya (Jan­i­na Gavankar) and her part­ner Dylan (Misha Collins) to res­cue his young sons, Bob­by (Aditya Ged­da­da) and Jay (Lucian-Riv­er Chauhan), and the trio set off on a road trip to a base Mal­ick believes should pro­vide safe­ty for them.

But not every­thing is as it seems. Vio­lent run-ins on their jour­ney lead 10-year-old Jay to ques­tion his father’s sto­ry, and it soon becomes appar­ent the threat may be clos­er to home than any of them want to admit. Touch­ing on PTSD and undi­ag­nosed men­tal ill­ness among sol­diers return­ing from war, Encounter has an inter­est­ing premise, but pac­ing issues result in an over­long feel­ing, and the film rehash­es wor­ry­ing tropes about the poten­tial dan­ger peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es pose to others.

Time and time again we see schiz­o­phre­nia used as a plot device in films, usu­al­ly paint­ing peo­ple with the con­di­tion as unsta­ble and dan­ger­ous to those around them. Encounter sad­ly typ­i­fies this stereo­type, as law enforce­ment become con­vinced that Mal­ick is a ​“fam­i­ly anni­hi­la­tor”. The film becomes so con­cerned with the action (and shoot outs) it fails to real­ly chal­lenge this pre­con­cep­tion, and the sci-fi plot is dropped entire­ly once Malick’s psy­chosis is revealed, lead­ing to a lack of ambi­gu­i­ty which works to the film’s detriment.

While Ahmed gives a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly strong per­for­mance, the real stars are young Lucian-Riv­er Chauhan and Aditya Ged­da­da who play his sons. They have a charm­ing screen pres­ence and won­der­ful rap­port with Ahmed, and real­ly are the film’s sav­ing grace among a plot that is at best ill-advised, at worst offen­sive to peo­ple liv­ing with a men­tal ill­ness. It’s a shame con­sid­er­ing how strong Pearce’s debut Beast was, which felt like a more nuanced approach to men­tal instability.