Encounter
Riz Ahmed plays a US Marine who kidnaps his own sons to circumvent an alien virus.
Under the skin: Riz Ahmed, Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada
In March of this year, Riz Ahmed became the first Muslim to be nominated for an Oscar for best actor – for his electrifying turn in Sound of Metal. Indeed, the man exudes integrity, and as the former film dealt sensitively with issues seldom explored on the big screen, so Encounter dips its accomplished toe into similarly delicate waters. And it does so with enormous proficiency, marking the sophomore effort of the British writer-director Michael Pearce, whose first film, Beast (2017), won him a Bafta and universal acclaim. Here, Pearce’s first notable move was to cast a Muslim in the lead of an action-thriller, with his two (excellent) supporting players both being Muslim, too.
The set-up is a cracking idea. The ‘encounter’ of the title is not an invasion by some grotesque, bellowing monsters or aluminium-plated behemoths, but something entirely more insidious. In the words of US Marine Malik Khan (Ahmed), the populace is being taken over by non-terrestrial micro-organisms, such an abduction captured in chilling, microscopic detail in the film’s opening minutes. So Malik kidnaps his own kids from their infected mother and her new partner and embarks on a rescue mission disguised as a boys’ own road trip. Accordingly, the dialogue is littered with entomological allusions, both visually and literally, while the real world around them looks perfectly normal – as normal as parts of New Mexico and Nevada can.
Encounter is many things but above all it is the story of a father trying to win back the loyalty of his two sons. Unusually for a film with a science-fiction thread, much of the more personal material was inspired by the director’s own childhood. And it’s this human interaction that makes the action so absorbing. Not only is Riz Ahmed an engaging and trustworthy screen presence, but the young actors Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada as Malik’s sons are totally believable, too. Add to this some exemplary sound design courtesy of Paul Davies (Mogul Mowgli, A Private War) and astonishingly surreal landscapes, and you have a finely calibrated psychological thriller that keeps one guessing. If ultimately Encounter ends on a more prosaic note than what it promised at the start, it retains its integrity to the end. Perhaps the film’s greatest element of suspense is the possibility that it might betray its truthfulness. It doesn’t.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Octavia Spencer, Rory Cochrane, Janina Gavankar, Lucian-River Chauhan, Aditya Geddada, Misha Collins, Shane McRae, Antonio Jaramillo, Brennan Keel Cook, Bill Dawes, Robert Morgan.
Dir Michael Pearce, Pro Dimitri Doganis, Piers Vellacott and Derrin Schlesinger, Screenplay Michael Pearce and Joe Barton, Ph Benjamin Kracun, Pro Des Tim Grimes, Ed Maya Maffioli, Music Jed Kurzel, Costumes Emma Potter, Sound Paul Davies, Dialect coach Elizabeth Himelstein.
Amazon Studios/Film4 Productions/Raw-Amazon Prime Video.
108 mins. UK/USA. 2021. UK and US Rel: 10 December 2021. Cert. 15
