Independence Day: Resurgence

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (Roland Emmerich, 2016)

Movie theaters have been chockablock with ill-advised and hard-to-justify sequels in 2016, so Roland Emmerich’s bid to make a franchise out of INDEPENDENCE DAY seems like business as usual for Hollywood. Still, it’s some feat that INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE feels like a rush job even though twenty years have passed between the original and this sequel. Will Smith does not return, leaving his character’s absence to be explained with about as much elegance as Poochie being written off THE ITCHY & SCRATCHY SHOW on THE SIMPSONS. Some of the special effects impress, but a number of scenes don’t look much different than television dramas with conversations in front of chromakeyed backgrounds. The hash made from several weightless narrative threads does nothing to diminish the sense that this is a cash-in project timed to align with an anniversary ending in a zero.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE picks up two decades after the events of humanity’s defeat of the alien invaders. Knowing that a common enemy is out there among the stars, the world has become a more peaceful and unified place. Scientists have reverse engineered alien technology to improve Earth’s defenses in the event that another attack comes. Former President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is haunted by the the previous battle and worries another is imminent. His fears are confirmed when scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), among others, discovers that a distress signal is being sent by the first mothership.

When an unidentified vessel appears at the moon defense base, the snap judgment among world leaders is to destroy it. This victory is short-lived, as a ship three thousand miles in diameter follows and begins drilling into the Earth in pursuit of the molten core. Those fighting for Earth Space Defense against the aliens include Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), the onetime First Daughter and pilot who assists the current Commander-in-Chief; her fiancé Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth); and her friend Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the stepson of Will Smith’s INDEPENDENCE DAY character.

The aliens wipe out the United States’ East Coast, London, and presumably much of Europe and Asia, yet the massive toll doesn’t register at all. The lack of impact could be attributed to scenes of spectacular destruction becoming commonplace in comic book films and the like, so the imagery of large-scale catastrophes has become overly familiar to moviegoers. Emmerich doesn’t help matters by putting no emotional investment in these sections. There isn’t really any proportional human reaction to the incomprehensible carnage that occurs. Emmerich dispenses with the faceless masses and fleetingly recalled characters from the first film as if he’s stepping on an ant colony. INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE goes even bigger than before, although perhaps not as near-extinction level as THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW or 2012, but the tragedy merits little more than a shrug of the shoulders.

Emmerich’s large-scale disaster films are knowingly outrageous and campy to a degree, and INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE is no different even as it verges on self-parody. Brent Spiner hams it up as Dr. Brakish Okun, who has been in a coma since the previous film. Judd Hirsch is back as Julius Levinson, the father of Goldblum’s character, and he brings some levity via his matter-of-fact acceptance of all the nonsense happening around him. Spiner and Hirsch’s performances demonstrate awareness that this is all big and dumb, so why not have fun with it? The rest of the film subtracts fun from the equation and substitutes it with an earnest insistence that a good time is being had. Emmerich’s salesmanship is not convincing.

Grade: D-

It Follows

IT FOLLOWS (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

In IT FOLLOWS Jay (Maika Monroe) is enjoying her time as a teenager in a Detroit suburb until the night she chooses to sleep with her 21-year-old boyfriend. After their coupling, he reveals to her that a previous sexual partner passed along a ghost or monster to him that he has now given to her. It can change its appearance but isn’t visible to those not infected. It approaches at a slow, steady pace, so there can be time to escape it, but whatever it is remains unrelenting in its pursuit it catches you or is passed along to someone else. If that person doesn't give it to someone else or is killed, it returns down the chain to the previous person.

IT FOLLOWS achieves great success as a horror film with an antagonist that can be anyone and anywhere. Is that just a stranger shuffling along in the distance, or is it a mortal threat slowly creeping up? The need to remain vigilant scanning the background for any person coming near Jay and her friends is part of the fun writer-director David Robert Mitchell works into the film’s fabric. In this instance a slow approach is a virtue in developing a sense of perpetual unease. The unnamed menace in IT FOLLOWS scares because its presence does not attract attention and can be escaped for an indefinite period of time but not forever. The camera hunts the characters with frequent slow push-ins.

The thematic richness points toward this thing representing the fear of death itself. Before Jay’s boyfriend infects her, they play a game in which they try to guess what person around them each would like to trade places with. He doesn’t choose the guy with the hot date or the dad with a seemingly happy family but the kid. He says that the boy has his whole life ahead of him, also suggesting that he has not yet lost the innocence of youth. Other conversations revolve around recalled incidents when they lost some of their naiveté. IT FOLLOWS appears to be set during the summer, that seemingly endless time of joy for kids. The vintage quality of its unspecified era, like a slightly futuristic past, gives it a dreamy atmosphere out of time that accretes with reminiscing.

To draw out the metaphor, worrying about mortality is something that can be defended against and delayed, especially through sex according to the Freudian view, but short of a religious perspective, a finite end is in store for everyone. Mitchell presents a good mix of primal anxiety and intellectual deliberation, making IT FOLLOWS terrifying whether looking to be jolted while in one’s seat in the theater or much later when thinking about it all.

Grade: A-

The Guest

THE GUEST (Adam Wingard, 2014)

The Peterson household is still reeling from the death of their enlisted son Caleb when David (Dan Stevens) turns up at their door out of the blue in THE GUEST. He tells Laura (Sheila Kelley) that he and Caleb were good friends. Now that he’s been discharged from the army David is checking on the Petersons to fulfill the request his deceased fellow soldier made. Laura invites David to stay with the family for the time being and allows him to stay in Caleb’s untouched room.

David’s presence in their home becomes therapeutic for each of the family members. Laura’s husband (Leland Orser) can knock back beers with him and rant about how he’s been passed over at work. The Petersons’ 20-year-old daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) entertains the notion of him as a mature boyfriend to move onto while their son Luke (Brendan Meyer) finds a protective big brother who will defend him from the bullies at high school. Still, there’s something off about the unfailingly polite and even-tempered David.

Director Adam Wingard uses triangles as a visual motif in THE GUEST, suggesting that there are two people or sides fighting for the same thing. In this case David is defending a family in mourning and possibly all of those who have lost or could lose loved ones in military service, but his specific motivations and who he’s resisting are unclear for a substantial amount of the film. When the primary mystery is dropped, it still leaves more questions than answers. The lack of details is only an issue in terms of the social commentary, which seems integrated in a slapdash manner. Otherwise Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett milk David’s unpredictability and the expectations surrounding his character type from other movies for tension and humor.

With David’s cool exterior, there’s the prevailing anticipation for him to snap. Shots of him alone staring dead-eyed at nothing certainly support the suspicion that all is not as well as he tries to make it seem. Steve Moore’s synthesizer score reflects David’s mental state in its control. The skittering notes suggest a mind in a constant state of calculation while maintaining the appearance of composure. Stevens is playing a familiar outsider role, the tough guy with an unknown background, and Wingard and Barrett have him toy with the preconceptions audiences bring. When David is using a knife around the house and calling out a guy at a party who says he supports the troops, Stevens wears an air of danger about him, perhaps even more when he’s messing with someone. To some extent Stevens is giving a comedic performance. His embodiment of a ruthless killer is often arch. The hilarious thumbs up that he gives, while possibly a reference to TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY, encapsulates the funny sensibility riding shotgun in this thriller.

THE GUEST isn’t entirely satisfying in telling a story but makes up for some narrative shortcomings by virtue of delivering well-crafted genre cinema. The climactic sequence inside and outside of a maze for the Halloween dance mixes anxiety and laughs in nearly equal measures. The exclaimed ending stresses that it is not to be taken too seriously. It may not provide a conventional sense of closure, but THE GUEST strives for good, bloody fun while being sure not to overstay its welcome.

Grade: B-