Rating: C
Dir: Richard Anthony Dunford
Star: L.A. Rodgers, Karl Kennedy-Williams, Dani Thompson, Judson Vaughan
I have lived in my current home for 15 years. I have never been inside the houses on either side. Naturally, I will nod in acknowledgment, should we be taking out our bins at the same time – I’m not a savage. But that’s it. This film is good evidence for why. One minute you’re inviting your neighbours over for dinner. The next, they inevitably turn out to be extraterrestrials with an agenda, and are stabbing your dog to death with a stiletto heel, then creating pod-like replacements for you. This is what happens to Tanisha (Rodgers) and Luke (Kennedy-Williams), after they make the fatal mistake of being friendly, rather than adhering to “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Now, it’s clear that the new arrivals, Joseph (Vaughan) and Mary (Thompson) are odd from the start. Answering the door naked would be a clue there. But they end up coming next door, and what follows is a candidate for the most uncomfortable dinner party ever, mostly due to the guests having no concept of social conventions, e.g. eating pasta with their hands (top). An unfortunate remark about skin colour to their mixed-race hosts, causes Luke to respond, “What planet are you from?” Interpreting this comment to be exposure of their alien origins, the visiting couple take Luke and Tanisha hostage, along with their son, Dominic. When the Earthlings manage to escape, Luke decided he needs to stop the invaders before they can do the same to anyone else.
As a low-budget variant on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it’s not bad. There’s some wit on view, especially when poking fun at British mores, such as our reluctance to call out obviously aberrant behaviour. I felt the main problem was a need to develop its ideas in greater depth. The results here feel like a twenty-minute short extended to feature length, without significant addition to the meat of the movie. For example, there are other killings, presumably also carried out by the aliens, whose significance is tangential at best – and in the case of a TikTok creator and her friend, likely not even that. I’d rather have seen the quintessentially English awkwardness of the dinner stretched out, and gradually escalated.
Once the family get out of the house, the claustrophobic tension evaporates, and we get too much peering into dark woods, and too much of Luke slowly exploring the house after he goes back in. On the other hand, the four leads all give solid performances, accentuating their characters nicely, in a way which avoids feeling like an exaggeration, despite the obviously extreme situation. Things like Joseph and Mary expressing a fondness for wasps demonstrate this. I expected the comment about a dead wasp bringing a swarm to foreshadow something. It does not: perhaps the budget wouldn’t allow for it? Instead this ends in a way which Chris certainly saw coming. It might all just be a little too British and polite for its own good.