Nov 5, 2025 08:14 AM
Watched it for the first time in several years. So old now that the film has become a rotating staple even on Tubi, Pluto, and Plex.
The way the "visitor" converses so adeptly and neighborly with her potential victims, at times, is almost prescient of ChatGPT. Similar to the latter, it may be difficult to get a handle on the reality of something completely non-human loitering being behind the talkative facade. But you fully see such during the in-between scenes -- how utterly out of place and intermittently confused the creature actually is in the midst of bipedal monkey society, as well as coldly indifferent. Again, the convincing expertise of her speech seems akin to machine learning, of statistically choosing not only the next most likely word, but also the proper inflections and emotional resonances.
While the film is well acclaimed and ranked among the top movies of the 21st-century... Each time you view it, you can't help but think how irrational it is that space aliens capable of traveling between the stars would be coming all the way to Earth for "How To Serve Man" reasons. Not only would a civilization that advanced be capable of lab-growing any cultured meat it desired as a delicacy, but its members should be so post-biological that their technological forms wouldn't need food anymore.
The original novel was supposedly heavy with satire, ergo the narrative could be as offbeat and 2+2=5 as it wanted. The movie, however, lacked that luxury. But Glazer and Campbell sort of remedied things by making it symbolically unclear what was really transpiring inside the dilapidated house, with respect to its "black void" and "liquid abyss". Yet still, it does ultimately look like overcomplicated protein processing.
Of course, the actual allegory itself revolves around identity and "unauthorized immigrant in a strange land" issues. A psychological spiral into "species dysphoria" is triggered by a disfigured Adam Pearson arousing such empathy and personal disorientation in Johansson's character that she releases him from the "vat".
And there's also gender inversion of the female being the predator (albeit at the end the situation regresses to tradition). The finale is analogous to how much we evaluate each other on the basis of outer appearances, when even underneath real human skin, there likewise resides a shocking or disturbing horror that is equality-wise applicable to everyone. Deception is fundamental to life.
And any rate, conceiving the movie more as "atmospheric speculative fantasy with a moral" -- rather than science fiction -- is the way to slot it so that one or two "hanging together well" questions don't nag at you again during reruns.
https://youtu.be/J7bAZCOk0Sc
The way the "visitor" converses so adeptly and neighborly with her potential victims, at times, is almost prescient of ChatGPT. Similar to the latter, it may be difficult to get a handle on the reality of something completely non-human loitering being behind the talkative facade. But you fully see such during the in-between scenes -- how utterly out of place and intermittently confused the creature actually is in the midst of bipedal monkey society, as well as coldly indifferent. Again, the convincing expertise of her speech seems akin to machine learning, of statistically choosing not only the next most likely word, but also the proper inflections and emotional resonances.
While the film is well acclaimed and ranked among the top movies of the 21st-century... Each time you view it, you can't help but think how irrational it is that space aliens capable of traveling between the stars would be coming all the way to Earth for "How To Serve Man" reasons. Not only would a civilization that advanced be capable of lab-growing any cultured meat it desired as a delicacy, but its members should be so post-biological that their technological forms wouldn't need food anymore.
The original novel was supposedly heavy with satire, ergo the narrative could be as offbeat and 2+2=5 as it wanted. The movie, however, lacked that luxury. But Glazer and Campbell sort of remedied things by making it symbolically unclear what was really transpiring inside the dilapidated house, with respect to its "black void" and "liquid abyss". Yet still, it does ultimately look like overcomplicated protein processing.
Of course, the actual allegory itself revolves around identity and "unauthorized immigrant in a strange land" issues. A psychological spiral into "species dysphoria" is triggered by a disfigured Adam Pearson arousing such empathy and personal disorientation in Johansson's character that she releases him from the "vat".
And there's also gender inversion of the female being the predator (albeit at the end the situation regresses to tradition). The finale is analogous to how much we evaluate each other on the basis of outer appearances, when even underneath real human skin, there likewise resides a shocking or disturbing horror that is equality-wise applicable to everyone. Deception is fundamental to life.
And any rate, conceiving the movie more as "atmospheric speculative fantasy with a moral" -- rather than science fiction -- is the way to slot it so that one or two "hanging together well" questions don't nag at you again during reruns.
https://youtu.be/J7bAZCOk0Sc