‘Encounter’ Review: The Scenic Route

At the beginning of “Encounter,” the sophomore feature from the British director Michael Pearce, something bright and blazing crash-lands in the night and a swarm of microorganisms appears to colonize an earthly host. This body-snatching setup could not be more familiar. It could also be a feint.

Using the tropes of the alien-invasion thriller to tell another, more complicated story, Pearce and his co-writer, Joe Barton, make exactly half of a good movie. For a while, it’s enough to watch Malik (an electric Riz Ahmed), a stressed-out former Marine, interact with his two young sons (Aditya Geddada and Lucian-River Chauhan) as they drive full-tilt from Oregon to Nevada. Believing he is saving the boys from an extraterrestrial threat, Malik has kidnapped them from the home of his ex-wife and her new partner. His destination is a bunker where, he explains to the children, scientists are secretly working to repel the microbial invaders.

To the boys, this is initially a welcome adventure; but as Malik’s behavior becomes more volatile and unnerving — and we learn more of his history — his sons grow anxious and the movie grows too fond of its ambiguities. Malik’s trauma is clear, his invisible wounds as evident as the parasites he sees crawling in the eye of a California state trooper. Yet, after setting up a potentially powerful study of damage and delusion, Pearce (whose 2018 feature debut, “Beast,” signaled an unusual talent) remains torn between science fiction and psychological fact. And despite Benjamin Kracun’s sometimes haunting visuals — a decaying mining community in the Nevada desert; a drone shot of government vehicles gathering with insectoid purpose — the movie finally has nowhere to run but out of steam.

Encounter
Rated R for men with guns and creepy-crawlies with agendas. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video.