Director/Screenplay – Cory Finley, Based on the Novel Landscape with Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson, Producers – Dede Gardner & Jeremy Kleiner, Photography – Lyle Vincent, Music – Michael Abels, Visual Effects Supervisor – Erik-Jan de Boer, Visual Effects – Clear Angle Studios, MPC (Supervisors – Ralph Maiers & Robert Bonchune) & Redefine (Supervisors – Vishal Anand & Chimkay Kumar Das), Animation – Vaibhav Studios, Special Effects Supervisor – Nathaniel Acord, Production Design – Sue Chan. Production Company – Plan B Entertainment/Annapurna Pictures.
Cast
Asante Blackk (Adam Campbell), Tiffany Hadish (Beth Campbell), Kylie Rogers (Chloe Marsh), Josh Hamilton (Mr Marsh), Michael Gandolfini (Hunter Marsh), Brookyln MacKinzie (Natalie Campbell), William Jackson Harper (Mr. Campbell), Christian Adam (Zach), Vishwas (Chauffeur), Whitney Goin (Shirley Vuuv’s Secretary)
Plot
Earth has been invaded by the alien Vuuv. As a result of superior Vuuv technology, humanity has been economically ruined. When teenager Adam Campbell learns that his classmate Chloe Marsh is living under a bridge, he invites her, her father and brother to come and stay in their basement. At the same time, Adam and Chloe develop an attraction. She suggests that the two of them earn money by using chips that broadcast every detail of their romance to the Vuuv, who are asexual beings and will happily pay money to study Earth relationships. This turns their mutual family fortunes around before they receive a legal notice suing them because the Vuuv have detected that the two no longer like each other meaning that their relationship is not genuine. Adam’s mother Beth then suggests a compromise to offset the legal action – that she marry the Vuuv supervisor’s child so that it can come and study Earth domestic rituals. Problems then begin when the Vuuv moves in and begins trying to model their relationship after old shows it sees on tv.
Landscape with Invisible Hand was the third film from Cory Finley who had previously made Thoroughbreds (2017) and Bad Education (2019), both comedies. The film is based on a 2017 novel by US Young Adult writer M.T. Anderson.
There are a great many alien invasion films, along with a whole a subgenre of films and tv series that offer comedy takes on the alien visitor. These are usually works that gently mock the foibles and seriousness of the human condition as in the likes of Visit to a Small Planet (1960), My Stepmother is an Alien (1988) and Coneheads (1993). The alien visitor(s) comedy has proven a popular idea on tv in series such as My Favorite Martian (1963-6), Mork & Mindy (1978-82), ALF (1986-90) and 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001). There are a few other films that move over into satire with the likes of The Monitors (1969) and War of the Worlds – Next Century (1981).
Landscape with Invisible Hand starts out in a low-key way. It initially looks as though it is going to be a standard teen romance, but then this is twisted on its head and it feels like we are in the midst of an episode of Black Mirror (2011- ) as Asante Blackk and Kylie Rogers agree to wear control chips to earn sponsor money as their romance is broadcast to the aliens. This comes with some appealingly amusing scenes like where Kylie is nudging Asante to face her in a different direction so images of the homeless are not getting in the frame, or a fight that almost breaks out at the dance between them and another couple who are also broadcasting but are intruding into their line of sight. This is escalated even further shortly after when Asante and Kylie are served legal notices that the aliens have detected that their feelings for one another are no longer genuine and they are required to pay back extensive damages for contract infringement.
Tiffany Hadish with Vuuv husband
Landscape with Invisible Hand features possibly the weirdest aliens to ever appear in an SF film. They look exactly like ambulatory pieces of the salmon sashimi I order with my sushi with a pair of attached eye stalks and two tentacles with pads that are constantly rubbing together in a coarse susurrating pattern that is meant to be their equivalent of speech. It is possibly one of the most different conceptions of aliens that any film has tried in some time.
Things become positively outlandish when one of the aliens marries Tiffany Haddish and moves into the house. There is the deadpan bizarreness of watching Haddish sitting at the dinner table cutting up its food for it, or it ordering her around in mimicry of the families in domestic 1950s comedies it has been watching. The film goes out as Asante Blackk’s mural, an honest work about life under the aliens, is acclaimed and he paid to become their artist – only to board the ship where the wall containing the mural has been transported and find that it has been repainted into a work showing the Vuuv as welcomes benefactors.
