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“I’m just really lonely,” an errant incel hopefully tells a gender-fluid alien (who he believes to be a homeless murderess on the lam) before asking them to live with him.
Much of White Reindeer director Zach Clark’s latest, a low-fi black comedy about an alien invasion, revolves around exchanges like these; The Becomers is a loose series of close encounters between a couple of amorous body-snatchers and a wide array of homo sapiens who, having adapted to the politically roiling American suburbs of 2020, prove even more alien. The film is a light riff on the science fiction B-films of the ‘50s, striking a difficult tonal balance–– it’s pointed without being didactic, idiosyncratic without being too cute–– and, at times, attains some genuine sweetness as a result.
The Couple That Fell to Earth
The Becomers begins with a voiceover by Sparks’ singer Russell Mael describing the beginnings of a familiar kind of love story (a blind date in the sulfur rain, getting tipsy on “black drink,” saying I love you for the first time), over images of the earth from afar and an adorably old-school alien with giant glowing blue eyes. After crash-landing and using a middle-aged hunter as a skin suit, our E.T. protagonist seeks their partner, journeying into civilization in the form of a young woman (Isabel Alamin) they find in distress on the highway. These opening passages, likely the slowest of the film, are largely wordless–– at least until our lonely lover learns English from Fox News and dating shows.
source: Dark Star Pictures
The rest of the film’s breezy 85-minute runtime is a bemused tale of body-swapping gone awry for two non-people who just want to be together. Eventually, after causing accidental carnage several times over, the pair adopts the bodies and lives of a red-pilled born again couple (Mike Lopez and Molly Plunk). When the couple’s friends and neighbors start coming around, the aliens’ naturally parasitic but ethically strict way of life starts to feel like the least of the world’s problems, at least for now.
Each member of the small ensemble cast brings warmth to the task of embodying the literally star-crossed lovers at the center of this story. Plunk in particular is a stand-out, inhabiting her body with a teenager’s combination of earnestness and gawkiness, like someone eager to please but not quite used to walking around in their own skin yet. Jaquelyn Haas, too, steals her few scenes as the alien’s artistically inclined lover in the body of a bus driver named Debbie.
source: Dark Star Pictures
The story’s absurdist equal opportunity fish-out-of-water comedy also manages to soften characters of a kind that have become regular fixtures of political caricature in the years since the pandemic, the birth of #MeToo, and the Capitol Riot (not to mention increasingly pressing climate change), presenting the kinds of wistful observations on human frailty that animate The Man Who Fell to Earth with the oddball cadence of something like Escape from the Planet of the Apes (or Dogma). Yes, QAnon is an easy target, but seeing it through an alien’s eyes helps freshen the silliness of our homegrown brands of dangerous magical thinking. The film’s not-quite-but-almost-kitsch production design (by Glamhag), throwback synth-y score (by Fritz Myers), and spare yet singular visual effects (with prosthetics and makeup by Cyle Williamson and Pete Gerner and VFX by Joshua Johnson) help maintain this sense of affectionate bemusement as well.
Conclusion:
As with Clark’s other laid-back films about idealistic but lonely dreamers trying to figure things out, The Becomers politely reminds us that being a human is fundamentally weird–– and yes, being a human in 2020 was especially weird. It doesn’t belabor the point, though, striking a surprisingly hopeful note amidst the metaphorical (and here very literal) slime of being an American in a particular time and place, struggling to make sense of it all. Cornball or no, this little throwback confidently shrugs, love can make things a little easier.
The Becomers is available to stream on VOD and in select theaters as of Friday, August 23rd.
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