SPOOPYWEEN DAY 12 SIGNIFICANT OTHER!!!!

Day 12

Significant Other

This was a curious one. The title and poster art were interesting, the premise sounded promising so. It made it to the list.

It has nothing to do with the fact it takes place in my literal neck of the woods, or the fact you can see me in the background at one point walking naked as I do through the woods.

No I’m not in the film, though I am known to roam the forest naked and regularly am confused for a sasquatch by hikers, or confused as a sasquatch by horny sasquatches. The point is it’s a hairy mess and I don’t hike anymore.

But this film sounded hopeful and at this rate anything. Even a painful backed up shit that makes you wince after having pushed that log out because of the pain. Would be better. In comparison to the Children of the Corn movie last night. Which is still irritating me like a boil on your balls.

So lets not dilly dally, and grab your packs. It’s time to go hiking in the Pacific Northwest with your significant reviewer and work on our relationship, in the most productive setting possible. An incredibly isolated heavily wooded area where animals can tare apart evidence.

The Film.

Well this film sure as hell knows it wants to get things goin for us, and I am NOT going to complain.

A glorious forest view on a mountain top, suns out and things are looking F-I-N-E fine. Until a red burning craft from SPAAAAAAAAAAACE crashes into the woods, where we see a poor one antlered elk get its ass smashed in by a gooey chittering alien.

Just another day in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

No I’m not kidding, we get a lot of weird shit in our woods here, it’s crazy. But we love it.

So that there is the start of our movie giving off some fun Predator opening vibes, and just like that we are introduced immediately to our couple whom are headed out for adventure!, Ruth and Harry.

These two are traveling a really well known spot, The Red Ridge Trail. It’s a very scenic place, doesn’t take long to get through honestly. But if you are looking for a spot to take some killer photos, watch some deer and fully veg out any stress you have? It’s a good spot. Seriously, heavily endorse going. Even with aliens.

It’s the start of a very happy experience for these two and there is absolutely no weirdness what so ever to it. Nope. This does not feel like a couples lets fix our relationship by going out into the woods away from anyone who could hear us and animals would help dispose the body type trip.

Three guesses on who isn’t excited for this trip and I’ll drop you a hint, two of those guesses? Are wrong.

Why people head out into secluded places to work out their differences, no idea. I mean it’s a choice. But also an awkward one because well. Read the room.

If you have trouble connecting as it is and feel distant. So you decide ‘hey, lets backpack into the wilderness and camp out for a few days’, once you finally have ‘the’ talk, and you start getting open and real with one another. If things don’t go how you expected? That’s gonna be one hell of an awkward walk back, and a shortened vacation.

Sometimes its better to not over think something and decide, maybe if we get away from things, we get you super SUPER relaxed, and chill, and we aren’t in a stressed place. Maybe then we can have a calm discussion, while reconnecting and things will be super cool again.

A life lesson.

If you and your partner are beginning to have some issues, and you start thinking you need to go the extra mile like that to ‘make them calm’? You really just need to have a conversation there. If something isn’t right in your soup, and you add a little too much salt? It’s not going to get better by letting it sit for a while, or moving the pot to a different burner. You gotta toss in some potato slices to suck up that saltiness and work on fixing the flavor profile.

Otherwise you are just transferring the same problem to a new location. Keep it simple, work it out, talk things through. THEN go on a vacation, a fresh start, whatever you wanna call it.

Am I getting ahead of myself here? No I don’t think so.

Seriously her body language is anything but “This is right where I want to be”. It’s more of, not like I’ve read this a few times from others, but more of an ‘Okay sure, let’s go with your plan, we could just figure this out back home but, okay. Sure. Whatever’.

So only great things can come of this.

Am I complaining 20 minutes into he damn movie?!

No not at all. I love this so far. It’s a pretty real feeling relationship between these two. They have some cute little annoy each other vibes going on and you can tell they’ve been together a while. They know how to get the other to laugh even if they don’t want too, and they also both feel like they are on two different paths. It’s solid acting, I dig it. She’s on a lets go and make the best of this who knows it might be nice path, and he is on a, this is gonna fix everything, it’ll be just what we needed and we’re going to walk down this mountain the happiest people ever. While the alien out there is just like “Hold my beer”.

But thankfully. There is something worse than an alien up there. Oh yes. Something far, far worse. Remember the opening to the recent Hellraiser film? How we went from a meatsack getting torn open to ball slapping hot sex that got ruined the moment the guy told her I  love you?

Well Harry never saw that movie.

But we did!

So Harry feels things are going pretty good. They hiked all day, possibly had sex, I mean she hinted at the possibility but in all honesty you gotta get adjusted to sleeping in a sleeping bag before you go fucking your backup or your hips. They had a nice dinner. She went and peed in the forest late at night only to encounter something unseen watching her and chittering.

So Harry takes 5 hours on the mountain as being a good sign to move his plan ahead a few days! He takes her up to the point EVERYONE goes on this trail for and deservedly so. It’s a nice outlook you can see the sun, the valley. Everything. It’s an Instagram lifer wet dream, and a very serene scene.

Ruth is genuinely happy with this. Harry is earning a fair amount of good boy points for having taken her out here and shown her this. It makes squatting in the woods and slapping mosquitoes off your thighs while praying a snake doesn’t bite your ass, let alone ticks in your pubes. All feel like, okay. This was kinda worth it, I love the view.

It’s really that nice.

Until your boyfriend decides to rush his super secret mega strategy to fix things and propose to you on the spot, with the sun coming down and looking majestic, and setting the perfect scene to look back on after your married, and imagining how creamed her jeans must be with all the flowing romance and beauty.

I can’t read women like 76% of the time. I can admit that. But with learning, experience, and studying them in their natural habitat during the course of relationships. I have learned a bit, and I know I honestly get them and read them a lot better than what I quoted. But there is this factor we all sometimes get, and I absolutely do. Where you may feel things are fine, and not realize they aren’t, so you don’t try to figure it out, fix it, and just let it fester.

So a lot of us, myself included may understand and read women pretty darn well, and men too. But that little factor does add a buffer and its nice to have it noted, just so you don’t make your partner wonder ‘Are they seriously that oblivious, or just stupid’, another thing I am familiar with.

I love when we get relationship movies.

OH right the movie.

So Harry is using this moment, where he actually did get a few points and got her to enjoy herself and slightly unwind. To then drop on her the “I’ve never known what I wanted in live, until now, and after 6 wonderful years….”

Yes. The man is proposing to her on the mountain, on a small dangerous cliff. With a rocky pointy death below.

And yes.

It does not go well. At all.

Oh our boy Harry crashes and burns sooooo badly.

It goes over so poorly in fact that poor Ruth, has a panic attack. Things start going fuzzy, she’s popping out her meds. All we need is some stress farting and a dab of irritable bowels and we will have the best vacation memories to look on when we ride back home. Windows down.

So yeah. Ruth is not happy, she’s stressed, the points he earned are taken back and his balance is now in the negative. If the guy had let her relax, made the effort to make it more about her and trying to work things through. Shit if the dude just waited another day or so. It would still happen likely, but make for a less awkward trip knowing you NOW have to walk back to camp after having your dream reality crashing down and heart destroyed. Because you couldn’t read the signs on the trail.

Patience is a virtue, and starting a fire in the forest will destroy acres of land.

So don’t rub your sticks together.

Anyway.

That’s where we’re at.

But!

It only gets worse!

We have a beautiful moment ruined by a panic attack from a guy who shouldn’t had asked his girlfriend what he did, especially when she has thoughts and feelings about commitment that do NOT mirror his own. Now we get that awkward time back at camp. Where the broken hearted now have to be consoled by the other so they don’t feel like total shit. Not the one doing the consoling. See again I am loving this not because its going horrible for them. But because this is playing out like an actual thing you can not only believe and see happening. But like some of us may have had very similar unintended fallouts and discussions. Its good stuff and not something we often get in an hour and 24 minute horror film.

So she tries softening things a bit, he of course isn’t really wanting to have that conversation and just plays it off like “Everything is fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine down here. Now. How are you?”, so that means its time to begin…the discussions.

That fun moment when you know it’s time for the boss to stop being your friend and bring up discussing your performance review.

It just gets worse from there.

As most couples can tell you, and you yourself may know. Whenever you have a disagreement, a little bickering, playful discussion. There eventually comes that moment, where we as adults should step back and let it go. Instead we can sometimes as Harry demonstrates. End up becoming defensive and going on the attack.

As she tries to get him to understand where she’s coming from and why she reacted how she did. He is still hurt by the rejection, and decides this is a good time to attack with his brute honesty. Which goes from his first mistake of calling her panic attack and anxiety something about over reacted and dramatic.

No matter how badly you may want to say that at times, if you are with someone who has those struggles. 9/10 times it is a horribly bad idea to downplay these as just being emotional and silly. Why 9 out of 10? Because there’s always that one that ends with someone getting stabbed with a fork, or someone will pee in your dinner leftovers in the fridge.

Now, he could’ve left his failure at that moment, and accepted her response of “You have no idea how this works, also fuck you”, but he’s in the zone. So he doubles down on his truth fight and delivers another blow, telling her she’s afraid they will end up like her parents and she needs to get over this shit.

Apparently her parents divorced and it fucked up her childhood so she now has commitment issues as she’s afraid well, people change, feelings change, why complicate something good with a title and name change. But he’s not done there. I mean if you are going to call someones panic attacks over reactive, and blame them for turning your proposal down on them having stupid issues thinking they’ll be like their parents, why not go for the knockout and bring up how she doesn’t talk to her therapist, she just says what she wants to hear, pops pills and always bitches about the toilet seat.

After granting him a look that uses the classic Klingon Worf’s line “If you were any other man I would kill you where you stand”, she politely lets him know ‘you done fucked up now’ and their one time trip into the calm paradise of the Pacific Northwest mountain forest among nature, is now super awkward and no one is cuddling or squeezing dick tonight.

Its not funny to me, for once, but actually was really cool. Because as the couple argued and she took shots from her partner. Him scampering off to cry alone in their tent, and her to sit outside and try to calm down after the verbal gas he’d thrown on her. You have all of nature watching this soap opera. Deers, chipmunks, rabbits, and near by our alien visitor.

You’d think because this film is so short. This would lead into one of them getting attacked and horribly violated. But no. Instead you have the alien just. Observing them, and lingering watching Ruth rest her head in her hands.

I like it because it’s not really showing…a curiosity? So much as it comes off a bit more intelligent. I could be reaching honestly, but the fact the alien wasn’t making any threatening noises of any kind or growling while it takes a shit. It comes off as interesting. Especially with how its poised nearby like it genuinely was listening in on the moment it caught them in.

Not gonna apologize for wanting an intelligent life form and not just a frightened kill them all alien. Predator pulled it off, and The THING, so why not!

Well we shall see. For now its time to tackle the new morning. Nothing like a good nights sleep facing away from your partner, knowing you need to be civil or else someone is getting kicked out into the cold and as much as we love the outdoors, we all know no one is brave enough to lay out without a tent anymore.

Thankfully we don’t have round 2 gearing up. In fact we don’t have anything to worry about. As Ruth begins to wake up and find herself alone, she pokes her head out. Ready to see what awaits her. A man ready to apologize for being a dick? BOTH of them apologizing? Or will there be a hole dug next to the fire.

Neither of these things happen you poor unfortunate jaded souls.

Instead she pops out and finds a friendly cup of coffee waiting for her, and a none threatening knife jammed into a log with a knife. Any time you find a note that’s kept in place on a log by a knife stabbed into said log. It’s always none threatening. You could use a stone sure but. It looks cooler when you do a thing with a knife and think to yourself “Yeah, just like the old mountain men would do”

The fact she isn’t grabbing her bag and running for safety shows us he’s as much a threat to her as he is when fighting a wolf spider in their garage. Which is to say the wolf spider would move into the house and Harry would accept this.

So finding her man of questionable life decisions gone for now, on a walk to clear his head. She decides to make herself a bit of that fresh coffee and go for her morning shit, figuring he’s far enough away he’ll still imagine she never does so.

Unfortunately for her as she finds a nice spot to unload on mother nature the MRE enchiladas from last night. She discovers the body of the deer from earlier in the film. The one the alien has bashed. As it turns out that poor deer has had its skull perfectly split in half like a samurai was roaming the woods and took it out. Its body is also covered in a thick deep black fungus. The tree it dies under, is also marked in this black fungus. But before she can cry out and unleash hell from her sphincter. Her boyfriend returns behind her and is there to comfort her immediately. While deciding to also poke at the deer body and reassure Ruth that it’s all okay, don’t worry about it, lets go back to our camp and hold hands.

It actually seemed to work. All It took for things to be good between them was a split open deer sprouting fungus.

Seriously they go back to the camp site and the neon signs are lit up for Cuddle Town, welcoming population Harry.

Things went so well in fact, that Ruth slept in and wakes up like she slept for 30 days. Or woke up when Harry did and spent a few minutes getting to know herself and starting the morning off right. So she wakes up and smells food cooking, her man is prepping breakfast, coffee is made and bubbling. But she has some unfinished business. She never got to take that dump yesterday. Which is one of my favorite and relatable scenes. As she wakes and smiles to Harry, Ruth takes off and says she’s gonna stretch her legs a little bit and be right back. He immediately ask if he’s invited, she declines. He tells her to hold on its really no trouble. She again denies him. But the third time he informs her he is good to go and wants to accompany her. She flat out tells him, dude. I gotta take a shit.

Understanding this means she would like some private time to accomplish this forbidden knowledge task, he agrees to sit back down, wishes her well and returns to breakfast prep.

And she really does go out to take that dump. Majestically of course.  But on her outing to find the best place to decimate a part of nature. She discovers a cave.  A cave with an oddly alien like glowing blue stones, and a very alien like puddle of I’m assuming alien jizz all over the cave floor. She decides this is the best shitting cave ever and readies to unload her worries and fury. Only to hear something behind her, leaving her to scream and.

We have no clue.

All we know is that, as she returns to camp. She is, different. She isn’t just shocked something saw her butthole. But she is quiet, guarded, and I’d go as far as to say inquisitive.

She also is no longer feeling warm joyful happy thoughts toward her man. She looks at him now like trying to determine friend or foe.

Am I saying she is an imposter? I mean…it’s plausible?

I think she is.

But this movie is really…It’s playing a good game. At the same time, with her acting unlike herself. You don’t really know if its because she’s no longer herself, or. Possibly. That she discovered her boyfriend may not be himself? We have NO idea.

And the way the film plays this, is too damn good. I kinda want to say.

The way the two act around each other. Harry still very much seems, well. Like Harry. He’s just happy she didn’t kill him or wake up and punch his balls. Both of them. The way she stares off into the forest, spends time away from Harry. No longer being sweet or even upset at him. Just. Indifferent. It’s a nice game of who is who.

But this film doesn’t have long. Unfortunately. We are 42 minutes into an hour and 24 minute film. And oh boy are we getting into some fun times now.

Harry is beginning to wonder about her, so she decides to, do an amazing thing.

She apologizes to him. She admits he was right. About her, thinking they’d end up like her parents. She’s sorry for how she’d been acting. This guy is having THEE moment. To top it off, she tells him she’s reconsidered and wants him to propose to her again, because she is ready for commitment.

I’m not going to make the joke, I won’t. I will just say that. He is so distracted, at the fact it only took finding a sliced up dead deer. To change her mind and turn her personal philosophy around. So he wont question anything! He’s happy that she wants to let him put a ring on it!

So they are going BACK to toss a bitch point, so he can pull off his picturesque proposal to her. Which he does. Only this time she accepts!

She puts the ring on. They smooch, and she kicks him right in the fucking balls and shoves him off the cliff side without remorse. Where we watch him fall down, and splat down on the rocks.

That was legitimately a great scene too. I mean you knew going up there that someone was gonna bite it. But you just didn’t know who. He could’ve tried to attack her, she attack him. BOTH struggle to fight the other and wonder who found out one of them wasn’t what they appeared to be, etc.

But we aren’t getting that. Instead. We have Ruth ball kicking and pushing him off the cliff to his death. If he were a spaceman he wouldn’t be screaming like a man who just got kicked in the balls by the love of his life to his death. More so. Ruth is now in full on emotionless lets continue on with life mode.

Just in the capacity of, ‘how do I get out of here now’ casual stroll in the forest. So we watch Ruth the ball slayer trek through the woods, blank of all emotion, continuing on until she passes out from actual exhaustion and dehydration.

Only to be discovered a few hours later by a man and wife also trekking through the woods trying to work on their relationship. Like I said the place is a hellscape for couples therapy.

So they decide to take in Ruth/Not Ruth and feed her, give her water. But she wants none of these earthly delights. Instead she watches them curiously, and suspiciously. Even going so far as picking up their little knife and claiming it as her own.

It would seem Ruth is indeed going to continue her new murder streak for the alien nation, or because she’s as Harry used to put it, a little emotional.

THANKFULLY this movie knows its run time, and pacing. Because we are getting a lot of fun now.

Is Ruth an alien or not?

Are these people aliens?

Was the DEER an alien?!

Well, firstly. Ruth is NOT the alien. Even as cold acting as she was, between the ball busting murder of her former fiancé, and her arming herself around these two strangers in the forest. She was just being cautious. We know this for sure, as out from the woods, comes Harry. Strolling happily into the camp. Smiling and immediately asking his wife to be “Ruth? What the fuck”

So yes. Harry was the alien!

Or fuck maybe BOTH of them are aliens.

I mean consider this. What if we have a violent escaped alien, who took over Ruth, and a bounty hunting alien took over Harry.  That would be an amazing remake of an even more awesome movie from way back starring Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Nouri called The Hidden.

But no. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Instead it’s a lot more simple. As Harry kills the couple swiftly, he demands Ruth tell him how she knew he was a fake. We discover when she went to take a dump in the shitting cave, she discovered the split in half body of the real Harry. Cocooned in black fungus like the dead deer was. She put two and two together and decided the alien man must die.

Well this is not acceptable. But it is hilarious.

He explains to her how he was simple a scout. Sent to earth to explore and report back what he found. Simple as that. But he stops from revealing too much of the plot and he immediately questions himself for having told her this. Why did he do it? Even he doesn’t know. Well who cares. She needs to die!

So we see Harry do his best Terminator 2 T-1000 impression and produce a blade from his fingertip to split her skull in half. But he can’t seem to do it.

It’s a fun moment because he can’t understand why he can’t just split her in half. Its played off a bit between a man trying to psych himself up so his flaccid dick will get hard so they can have sex but it just wont hold an erection, and an alien frustrated because he apparently doesn’t have full control over his clone.

Which turns out to be a great addition to the films story and how it relays back to us early scenes with Harry seeming to be just regular old Harry.

Apparently when this species kills the host and they become them, replicating, cloning changeling whatever. The inherit that beings memories, mannerisms, everything. So thanks to this. We have an alien who can’t kill a human that knows what he really is, because the man he killed and replicated actually loves her.

So now we get something I legitimately did not think I’d see in a horror film, or scifi for that matter. An alien struggling with realizing what LOVE is, and the fact it feels this for her when she as a person means nothing to them. But now they realize they love her because Harry loved her. So now. They can’t kill her!

Instead. They want to make her a part of their plans!

He’s actually politely, and creepily asking Ruth to let him show her something super cool. I mean she doesn’t exactly have a choice. And he wants explain to her how this is so amazing to him and what it feels like.

We learn that earth is the only place where love exist. That dozens of other worlds and lifeforms out there have nothing like it. It’s purely a human thing. Which makes it even more insanely cool. Speaking of insanely cool. He shows her the super cool thing he wanted to show her. Which is not his alien penis. Which is incredibly spellbindingly amazing for a micro penis. But instead he is showing her his space ship. Honestly it’s not bad for a modern designed ship. It looks like an upside down tear drop and admittedly, It is pretty cool.

But spaceships and micro penises will not impress a girl like Ruth. So she stabs him and gets him to follow after her into a genuinely creative trap.

She stabs fake Harry in the chest and takes off for the ocean. Swimming as fast and far as she can. While Bleeding alien Hairy follows. Unaware that lurking in the ocean, is a shark. Which immediately goes after him.

Of all things…a shark. I love it. So Harry is dealing with meeting an apex predator from the city of Atlantis, while Ruth takes off back into the forest.

Which seems counter productive to her escape but. Well what else is she gonna do?

I love it. I dig the vibe of this movie and its taking a unique approach to a typical invasion film. It’s also just insanely fun this idea, that an alien is feeling overwhelmed by what love is. To a point they want to share everything about themselves AND their plan with Ruth. It’s really a fun way to lay out more of the narrative in the film too. Them walking on the beach could’ve stayed with just, oh humans are the only ones to feel love. But no. We get imposter Harry explaining to her how his people are on their way to earth. That they will take over, impersonating everyone, and eventually they will destroy earth. This is just another Tuesday for them. But Imposter Harry, is in love now. And he wants to protect Ruth. He tried convincing her on the beach that he could save her from all of that. That he’d keep her safe, take her away from earth and give her an amazing life. Together with him. All before being stabbed and fighting the shark.

It's great. There’s no Bond villain like monologuing for no reason. The guys just trying to convince her to love him back and accept his feelings, his protection and embrace a new, safe life. Away from forgettable earth.

But in the words of our worldly poet, Megan Thee Stallion, if it don’t hang, then he can’t bang.

Well. If Harry survived a fall from a cliff onto the rocks shores of death. He can survive an encounter with Gawr Gura. Which he does, as we see him emerge from the water, dropping a perfectly severed shark head. And his mauled body repairing itself.

We are into the final 20 minutes of our film and I legitimately can’t wait to see it play out. Will it slip up? Does it pull out the rug on all of us? Does it flop around like a lubed up vibrator on tiled flooring?

No.

What we get is a truly creative thing of beauty.

Sadly Ruth is unable to escape. As she rest in the woods, collecting herself and taking a much needed snickers brake. Imposter Harry finds her and knocks her out with his tentacle. Dragging her off to option B. The cave.

Where we find Ruth now entombed in wall fungus. As his alien tentacle is….feeding off of her life force. Slowly turning Imposter Harry. Into Imposter Ruth.

He couldn’t understand why she would choose violence. Choose not to love him, knowing full well Harry loved her and would do anything for her. So. Imposter Harry does the one thing any man would love to be able to do when he cant pick up subtle signs from a woman. He just tentacle mind melds becoming her and absorbs her thoughts and feelings. Now I know I said men would love this, but women would get a kick out of it. Though truth be told they don’t really need it most the time. We are simple creatures of habit mostly.

Mostly.

So now Harry/Ruth alien understands her. It sees her past, her feelings. It knows she loved Harry very deeply, it knows she would’ve done anything, but her pain from her past kept her from committing herself fully to him. Which prompts the alien to tell poor Ruth that she won’t have to worry about her pain soon. Because it will end her and the pain will be gone.

Bringing us to the best thing since War of the Worlds used the common cold to defeat an alien invasion.

Ruth decides to introduce the alien which is now fully her. To the wonderful world of anxiety and panic attacks.

Seriously. It’s pretty goddamn great.

All she had to do. Was what her mind would always do to her. He just has to get imposter Ruth to start thinking about how she can try to be happy, and will try to deal with her pain. But her past will always creep up. It’ll always trigger memories of her parents fighting, She slowly and surely just walks the alien through the stages and all the while those emotions start kicking in and before you know it. Boom. The alien is having trouble breathing, it can’t cope, the world is spinning. The alien goes into full panic and begins running for Ruths pack. Digging for her medication to stop the attack. Giving the real Ruth time to free herself from the fungus, watching her clone begin to lose itself to the panic. It’s an eerie moment as you see Ruth looking down at herself. Seeing the panic and everything inside consuming ‘her’. Thinking she’ll let the clone suffer and pass out. Only to watch Ruth begin to calm the imposter, getting it to lay down, steady its breathing. Getting them to relax and slowly come down. Until Ruth looks around and spots a large rock, her sympathy over as she….kind of defeats and handles her anxiety in a very real form, and then literally beats it with a huge ass rock. Caving in its skull.

She picks up her clothes from the cave, and exits Red Ridge Trail. Finding her and Harry’s truck right where they left it.

She gets in, starts it up, and starts driving down the road as we hear Bowie singing about Major Tom. But that’s not the end. The radio goes static and we hear Imposter Ruth over the radio talking to her. Yep she healed herself, and she has a final message for Ruth. She can’t escape whats coming, and she hasn’t stopped it. With that she turns the radio off. Crying and driving who knows where. As we see multiple red streaks of fire fall from the sky and land all over the mountain she’s driven away from.

The End.

This was great fun, nothing at all I was expecting, or could’ve expected. It was a nice take on a familiar story and even if Ruth wasn’t able to win the war. She did win the battle, and pissed off an alien scout.

It was really a nicely thought out, played story. It kept you guessing, it didn’t really hide too much, so much as it just kept you second guessing and I appreciate that a lot more, over a film trying to blatantly mislead you. You know what I’m talking about too. I hope.

In a film like this, usually the easier path most films would go. Would be after Ruth stumbles into Harry when she finds the dead deer. They would’ve started in with the “Why are you acting like this?” “He never liked black coffee when we’re home, why is he drinking it here?”, “Harry never tried antipasto, but now he’s eating slugs off the ground?”, “Harry never eats me out in bed, now he’s doing it and tentacle tickling my butthole. Wait does Harry have a tentacle?”

They could’ve also shown us what Ruth saw in the cave earlier on and tried building a tense follow up after that. Her trying to escape the thing that killed her man, and how she nearly slips up when attempting to get away from him, and trying to set up traps to prove what he is before killing him.

Those tricks, that tired shit. That’s what I’m talking about.

But no. Instead. The film played it differently and had fun. It built a nice subtle guessing game.

Looking back you know when things happened. When Harry got up and took a walk the day after their fight to clear his head. The alien attacked and became him. Bumping into Ruth on his way from the cave. We saw the alien nearby watching the couple when they fought. So you could easily see it happening and replacing him when she stumbled into him and he seemed perfectly fine considering his mood the previous night.

But by showing us that Ruth stumbled onto the cave, found something horrific, and returns to the camp site completely detached. It was played in a great second guess yourself way, wondering if she was actually taken over and it wasn’t Harry? Was the alien doing the assimilating thing of understanding its new host, surroundings etc. Or…was Ruth trying to process everything she saw in that cave and the realization this perfect copy of the man she loved was an inhuman imitation.

It really did a great job playing these events out. Seeing how she processed things until she decided to try and kill him. Emotionally detached and almost like a robot after she did what she needed to do. To a point she really came off like you would expect an alien to be in one of these types of films.

When in reality she just shut down part of herself, to kill something that looked and acted and sounded like the love of her life. It’s like the zombie trope. Having your loved one turn into a flesh eating monster, and having to realize you now need to kill the person that you loved, to free them from being this brainless soulless thing.

They just played it in a great way that until we saw Harry coming to the camp site. You were left just wondering. Man, even better was Harry’s entrance to the camp.

How Ruth picked up the knife belonging to the couple, and they were worried about her. While she’s staring off into the darkness, knowing what was coming out there, and then hearing Harry call out to her. I mean damn.

The movie could have played that off as well as the classic “Hey lady calm down, its just your boyfriend”, and having to suffer through Harry the imposter trying to convince the rest of the group Ruth is off her meds and needs to relax. Everyone telling her to calm down until the alien Harry shows itself and kills them.

Instead of that, we get Harry not even giving a shit about these two. They’re just in his way. I love that they also gave him the line while approaching the man “Hey don’t worry I come in peace.” Alien humor is always welcome and I appreciated the hell out of it.

Dude just killed those two. Didn’t even blame Ruth for it having to kill them. It just wanted them dead so it could find out how she knew what he was before attempting to kill her. And the story just jumped from murder alien to alien in love now trying to convince the girl they planned to kill to now come be with them.

AND THEN!!!

Having Ruth fight herself and her own problems, gaining her freedom and a breakthrough she never got in her therapist office. All while the world readies to burn down. I mean she’s not gonna make it but. At least she’s her own person.

The movie honestly wouldn’t had worked so well, if not for the cast .Both Maika Monroe(Ruth) and Jake Lacy(Harry) did amazing in their parts. Especially Maika. She did a great job flipping a switch multiple times through the film with her emotions and personality.

I really didn’t know what we’d get in this and I’m glad for that. It could’ve been a trouble couple go into the woods and have to bond together as they encounter a deadly alien. It could’ve been a simple cut horror where an alien kills her boyfriend and now stalks her. But instead we got a great Invasion story.

The music was minimal and impactful. It never stood out fully, but did a great job creatine an eerie subtle change in the air through each act of the film. That along with the beautiful cinematography just sold this film. The sweeping forest shots were great. But the things I loved. Specifically the beach scenes.

I loved seeing the crashing waves on the beach with the camera looking down as the two walk across the beach. If you pay attention to the waves, you can see the water avoiding the entire area where the invisible ship sits before they expose it. Using the same overhead camera work to show Harry bleeding out in the ocean, the shark swimming close by. But really the end of the beach scene. When we see just the waves crashing and water pulling back. It’s beautiful, and its dark. The shots of the mountain heading toward it and away. It’s just really nicely framed and shot. I love it.

The film was directed AND written by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. The same two men who worked on a crime film I remembered watching with an ex of mine called Body. Which is also a fun movie to check out. They are a fun duo and I gotta give them props for trying something different with a tried and true formula invasion film. They made it fresh, they got it to work, and best of all their crew and actors sold it. The pacing was spot on, the film was right to the point. Another great example of well put together filmmaking storytelling. They made the runtime work, told their story and found creative ways to flesh out the story without forcing it or cutting straight for the meat of it all. They understood the assignment and delivered. Kudos on them.

YES this helps clear some of the ancient shit stink that was Children of the Corn 2020. But that’s going to linger in my soul forever. This at least. Gives me something to hold onto and be happy with.

Absolutely check this one out and circulate it with friends. Buy it, rent it. Show the directors some love. Can’t hate a movie that does its job and entertains you all for under an hour and a half.

So until tomorrow, if you find yourself and your partner having trouble and decide to head out into the woods. Stay away from the PNW. We got fucking big foots, Aliens, Mountain Lions, and changelings. Just deal with your shit at home then go to Walmart like any other Washingtonian. Goodnight!