Encounter (2021)

Extremely well-acted drama/thriller. Riz Ahmed gave a stellar acting performance. Young Lucian Chauhan was amazing too as well as the other little boy, Aditya Geddada. Then there is Octavia Spencer. Nuff said. If you want a movie with acting chops, this one has it.

No, the film isn't a Sci-fi film. You can basically ignore the people who rated this film poorly because they were expecting a brainless Alien invasion film and couldn't look past the label to see how well this drama was put together. The story isn't original. It's a well-known trope with dramas and it worked well. A father who loves his children so much that he kidnaps them, but the father isn't completely alright in the head. In this case it's a former Marine with PTSD issues. What makes this film shine is how much the children idolizes and love their father. But gradually see their idealized image of their father crack and they see the vulnerable human being their father is.. The love is so strong that they stand by him against the odds that their father may not make it through this ordeal. For me, it's a tearjerker. I am glad this film had a happy ending and Matik isn't killed by bloodthirsty government soldiers.

So yes, this is a family drama, not another stupid sci-fi film. I am giving it an 8/10 because it was very well put together. I won't score it down because the studio or IMDB label it Sci-Fi. Blame the studios or IMDb for giving it a Sci-Fi label but look past that and understand the family dynamics happening here and how the children reverse the roles to protect their parent.

Fmovies: Riz Ahmed is one of those actors who rarely makes a bad movie . At the moment he is on a hot streak of really good films and Encounter is no different although I'd argue that Riz probably isn't the star of this film , it's the two actors who play his sons .

The two lads play brothers who embark on a journey with their father, who is trying to protect them from an alien threat and at first it feels like a run of the mill alien/Sci Fi movie but you soon realise it's much , much , more than that.

It's a film about desperation , survival and mental Heath but most of all it's a film about family .

I love the interaction between the father and his sons . Forget what's going on around them , these boys desperately love their dad and visa versa and being a father of two boys myself , this resonated with me .

A special mention has to go to Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada. Both are fantastic. Lucian is brilliant and I predict big things for him and Aditya is so funny .

Listen out for some unusual use of some Phil Collins music . A strange choice but it worked perfectly.

Encounter is much better than I could have hoped for and might surprise quite a few people who are probably expecting a completely different type of film .

Riz Ahmed may be a good actor, but most of the projects he has chosen are below average. If he is making these choices himself, he should work with an urgent professional team.

I mean, how does a person get involved in such a crappy project after "Sound of Metal"?

The movie is so bad that it is in your hands wherever you hold it.

Encounter fmovies. An ex marine (Ahmed) kidnaps his 2 sons and heads off to a secret base to escape from an alien invasion in the form of bugs getting inside your body. The police, FBI etc go after him.

Seemingly badged as some form of sci fi drama, which it most definitely isn't, this features fine performances from Ahmed and the 2 kids in more of a pursuit thriller, as the real agenda becomes clear. It looks nice and is well acted with a couple of decent scenes and a solid and quite interesting psychological drama emerges. It is though just a bit boring in places and despite its smarts, there was I feel room for more. Bit disappointing.

Cause theyre only there to do you harm, and for god sake dont get bitten then youll die riught away. Insects and honkytonk crakcling psychosis is keywords to this wannabe strange family road trip an enthralling encounter of the aliens of the world, a tension build up that fizzles like an old balloon when passing half through the flick, and from there you cant wait for its snail race towards the end to be over. Allthough its a plausible story about a madmans race against the invisibles, as the sturdy correctly lined up convoy or fbi cars armoured to their gums with all kinds of pops after the g-mans handbook to stop the looney tuned daredevil racing like ''pip'' in the nevadan desert. Its not a film that gets the thumb up from a grumpy old man because its boring and generic as gravity itself

There are some special effects that are cool but foremost its just hickups of stories told before. So its just 5 stars outta 10 not good, not bad, nothing to sprawl about.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Malik Khan (Riz Ahmed), a decorated US Marine, takes his young sons Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Gedadda) on a cross country trip to escape invading alien parasites that he says are circulating among them. After a long stint away, Malik uses the trip as an opportunity to make up for lost time, bonding with his sons and putting them through rituals of becoming men. But, behind the scenes, his grip on reality is called in to question, as his parole officer Hattie (Octavia Spencer) is called in to help investigators trying to track him down.

The cross country road trip is a familiar framework for American films, as is the possibility of different life forms entering our environment, but Encounter, from director Michael Pearce, takes these familiar concepts and blends them together to create something completely unique and striking. As others have noted, it's it's misleading categorisation as a sci-fi that does it a disservice, starting off as a not terribly interesting science fiction/alien invasion type film, before morphing in to something unexpected and revelatory.

In the lead role, Ahmed carries everything with an understated intensity that always brims just beneath the surface, presenting an image of a determined but apparently stable man, who takes a surprising turn taking him, and the film, down a different path, touching on themes of PTSD and mental illness. It gives an interesting variation on the road trip film, told from the angle of a brown skinned family heading in to the American outback, with run ins with profiling cops, gun nuts and general hostility.

The standard opening is enough to cause you to lose interest early on, but if you can work through it, you'll be treated to something revelatory and very pleasantly surprising. ****