Since Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers was first released 70 years ago, official and unofficial film adaptations have been set in small towns across the United States, 20th century San Francisco, a military base, a high school, and so on. All have had a common core: humanity is infiltrated and taken over by a shape-shifting invasion force from outer space. Zach Clark’s The Body Snatchers loosely plays on that theme, adding a new twist in that this time the body-hopping beings aren’t necessarily intent on conquest. They just want to coexist peacefully. But it turns out they may have chosen the wrong planet and/or species, as they discover that today’s humanity may be too messed up to be worth the effort.
That’s a good premise for the kind of smart, deadpan absurdism Clark is going for here. Yet despite its fantastic hook, this episodic narrative falls short of the oddly winsome black comedy its writer-director achieved with previous films like Little Sister and White Reindeer. The Becomers is the kind of hair-raising tale whose appeal wanes as you begin to realize it’s probably going nowhere. As science fiction, parody, and sociopolitical satire, The Becomers is equally bland. It’s off-kilter enough to grab attention, but ultimately too underdeveloped to really reward it.
Russell Mael of long-running cult band Sparks begins with a voiceover as our nameless, genderless protagonist, and—as the film progresses in the present tense—tells a backstory about life on a dying home planet. Eventually, she and her lover were selected for evacuation, traveling the cosmos in separate travel pods.
The result is that the narrator ends up in a wooded area in Illinois, where the pink smoke from the crashed spaceship attracts a hunter (Conrad Dean) who falls to his misfortune. He becomes the first human body inhabited by said alien, and staggers like a zombie toward a stationary car in which a woman in distress (Francesca, played by Isabel Alamin) is about to give birth – a significant inconvenience for all involved. When she discovers to her horror that this hopeful savior has glowing aquamarine eyes, she becomes Ship No. 2.
“Francesca” learns to impersonate a human and checks into a Motel 6, absorbing the language and culture via the in-room television – even though the channel she’s watching appears to be a parody of Fox News. Things go pretty smoothly until it becomes clear that the police are looking for “her” (the abandoned newborn has been found) and the receptionist, Gene (Frank V. Ross), gets a little too curious about this mysterious lonely guest. Forced to flee again, our hero/heroine asks a suburban housewife (Molly Plunk) for a ride, whose body and house are then usurped.
This turns out to be a poor choice, as it turns out that Carol and her husband Gordon (Mike Lopez) aren’t just charitable evangelical Christians. They’re also fanatical conspiracy theorists in QAnon mode, already neck-deep in a criminal plot to fight a “devil-worshipping elite.” That complicates our narrator’s reunion with “my lover,” a neon-pink-eyed changeling who appears in one human form (a bus driver, played by Jacquelyn Haas) and then changes into another. Trying to keep a low profile, the duo instead find themselves embroiled in intrigues involving the governor (Keith Kelly), the FBI and the national media.
There’s real potential in the idea of space creatures seeking asylum only to find themselves caught up in the more cultish extremes of our bizarre political times, which of course make no sense to them. But The Becomers never rises to a sufficient level of weirdness or critique to fully capitalize on that opportunity. Its closest previous screen equivalent is less a variation on The Body Snatchers than John Sayles’ Brother from Another Planet, but without that film’s warmth (or a lead performance as appealing as Joe Morton’s) to offset its tepid, quirky humor. The voiceover Mael recites is a droll mix of banality and surrealism that can’t be remotely enhanced by anything actually portrayed here.
The exquisite corpse-likeness of the identity-swapping premise keeps Clark’s film entertaining, though it ends up feeling too weak for such a daring conceit. There isn’t enough felt emotion here to make the plight of the alien fugitive lovers feel touching, as is ultimately intended, and the socially critical elements promise more than they deliver. Competently acted and designed, The Becomers is a clever idea that ends up feeling like it’s still being sketched out.
Dark Star Pictures screened the Chicago-shot indie film this weekend at Cinema Village in New York City, with additional bookings in other cities to follow and an on-demand launch planned for September 24.
