Next up on the S&S 2022 list is this Jonathan Glazer quasi-SF quasi-horror film.

So when I first saw this on the list, I was surprised, because I thought it was like… idk, a slightly upscale Species — a movie where Scarlett Johansson is an alien who goes around seducing men and then stealing their precious bodily fluids or whatever. A sort of light-feminist SF horror thing.

And that’s not completely wrong, but after seeing the movie, it’s also not entirely right; and now that I know what this actually is, I get why it’s on the list. This isn’t really a horror movie in any conventional sense — it’s slow and ambiguous in that arthouse style, and what’s going on is never really spelled out by the movie.

I’m going to talk about this more concretely behind the spoiler cut.

Spoilers

So what we’ve got is a very alien, very cold Scarlett cruising Scotland and looking for men to pick up. (Many of the men speak in accents that are incomprehensible to me; I’m never sure with things like that if the incomprehensibility is intentional, if this is supposed to be a heavy accent that disorients the viewer and keeps them a little unsure what’s being said… or if I’m just bad at understanding Scottish people.)

When she picks them up, she brings them into a building, to allegedly have sex with them. They undress (and to my surprise, at least one was sporting a boner; I didn’t think movies could do that, but apparently they can), and then… sink into the floor as they walk, to be trapped in a… um, metaphorical fluid space? See above re “ambiguous.”

But so the real core of the movie is that as Scarlett picks up these men, she becomes more human, eventually seeming to feel emotions and to be more aware of her body and to feel like something’s wrong. Is this some kind of absorbed humanity overlaying her actual alien being? Is it the personality of the human she’s been possessing? Is it the point of her activities? Is it an error in them?

The movie could be setting that up as a mystery, but it’s not. It’s never going to tell you, and it arguably doesn’t care. The point is simply that it’s happening, for whatever reason.

What it will do, though, is use this inversion as a source of pointed commentary. Because as Scarlett becomes more human, she suddenly goes from predator to prey: A dude who she meets on a trail doubles back to assault her, and for the first time in the movie she’s vulnerable.

But this tbh felt a little weird as some kind of feminist statement, because… okay, yes, I get what you’re going for here, movie, but at the same time, this guy is fighting against an alien that has been killing a bunch of people. Yes, he’s also terrible, but it’s hard to read this situation cleanly. But maybe that’s the point, too?

Ultimately, for all that the story and its character progression do matter, for me what stands out is the atmosphere of the thing, the mood it evokes. It’s about the solitude of this person, sometimes set against the loneliness and desperation of other people, sometimes contrasting with the vibrancy and life of a party, and sometimes just existing in an inhuman liminal space.

For my part, there’s not quite enough substance in the movie to even consider it for a top ten all-time list. But it is absorbing, and I see why it made some people’s lists.