‘Landscape With Invisible Hand’ Review: Hit Subscribe, Alien Overlords

“Landscape With Invisible Hand” mashes up the teen romantic comedy and alien-invasion horror genres to campy, mixed results. In an opening montage of paintings created by one of our high-school-age heroes, Adam (Asante Blackk), we’re introduced to a near-future in which an alien race known as the Vuvv has taken over Earth, not by force but through salacious dealings with the planet’s most enterprising capitalists. Over time, the Vuvv — who, far from ferocious creatures, resemble hermit crabs without shells and communicate by rubbing their paddle-like hands together — have rendered most Earth jobs obsolete with advanced technology, forcing humans to find creative ways to scrape together enough money to survive.

While in art class, Adam falls for the new girl at school, Chloe (Kylie Rogers), and invites her struggling family to stay in the rundown house where he, his mother, Beth (Tiffany Haddish), and sister, Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie), are living. Tensions arise between Beth and Chloe’s father (Josh Hamilton) and brother (Michael Gandolfini) because the new arrivals can’t pay rent. This leads Chloe to suggest a “courtship broadcast,” where she and Adam stream their dating life to a paying alien audience — a sort of intergalactic Twitch channel, broadcast through futuristic implants. The Vuvv, who reproduce asexually, have a fixation on human dating culture and romance. It’s as unnerving and darkly funny as it sounds.

Based on a young-adult novel by M.T. Anderson, “Landscape With Invisible Hand” is the director Cory Finley’s third feature after “Thoroughbreds,” and “Bad Education,” and like those prior films, it relishes in eerie discontent punctuated by oddball humor. But the plot never fully gels; characters ebb and flow in and out of the spotlight, and soon Adam and Chloe’s get-rich-quick scheme — and its strain on their relationship — falls by the wayside for a much stranger charade involving Beth and a young Vuvv who wants to play the role of a nuclear-family father. The one constant is Adam’s beautifully rendered artwork, which depicts the gradual creep of Vuvv control over human life through a teenager’s eyes.

Finley’s allegorical gestures toward issues of class, race and authoritarianism are more than apparent, but the film’s tonal inconsistencies make the satire wobble. There’s certainly intention in the way Finley depicts the Vuvv’s injection of propaganda into the human school curriculum, and how he shows certain Earthlings, like Chloe’s father, eagerly prostrating themselves in front of the alien invaders. But despite real-world parallels, these thematic elements contain no bite. The Vuvv, with their blatant lack of empathy and outdated perception of human society, are treated as jokes from the beginning. As a result, even their most alarming threats to Adam and his family come across as slight and inconsequential, undercutting the film’s central theme of resiliency.

Landscape With Invisible Hand
Rated R for science-fiction violence and a space alien’s idea of intimacy. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.