Direction: Cory Finley
Country: USA
From Cory Finley - the director of Bad Education (2019) and Thoroughbreds (2017) - comes Landscape With Invisible Hand, an offbeat sci-fi romantic comedy drama with fitting social commentary but grappling with an uneven narrative pulse. The film, an adaptation of M.T. Anderson's novel of the same name, ventures down devious pathways, losing track of a potential cinematic provocation due to storytelling veering into self-indulgence and characters who often feel emotionally distant. It’s also visually restrained for a futuristic tale.
While the film doesn't falter on every level, boasting occasional successful black humor and delightful tensions between families, it generally lacks soul and struggles to connect with the theme of an alien seeking entertainment through teenage love.
The director, concerned with charting trajectories of human subjugation and alien ascendancy, remains on the surface, weaving a crass hodgepodge of elements that don’t fully coalesce. However, respectable performances by Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, and Tiffany Haddish were a positive surprise, and that paid off in places.
