Review: Encounter

-


Malik (Riz Ahmed) is a marine recently back from duty who takes his two young sons, Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada) in the middle of the night claiming microorganisms are invading the Earth via insects. 

I don't recall seeing much advertising for this film. I had it on my watch list purely because of Riz Ahmed, so to be perfectly honest I thought this was going to be a sci fi movie. It's very much not that. It's about veterans coming back from warzones with PTSD. Malik has more to his story than that, which I won't go into because it's spoiler territory. 

This story has been done before, but what makes this one stand out are Ahmed and Chauhan's performance. As the mother of a 10 year old myself (god, I'm old) I had to suspend a lot of disbelief on what this poor kid has to process throughout the movie, but performance wise they were great. Octavia Spencer also has a small role and I always love seeing her.

Encounter may not be groundbreaking storytelling but it's available to stream on Amazon Prime and how can you say no to a solid Riz Ahmed film?

Recommended: Yes

Grade: B

Memorable quote: "Yeah...big ugly ones." - Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan)

Comments

  1. thevoid99December 29, 2021 at 4:22 PM

    I might see this. I do like Riz Ahmed as the guy doesn't get enough love.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamDecember 29, 2021 at 9:55 PM

      He's tremendous. I've loved every performance of his I've seen.

      Delete
  2. RuthJanuary 2, 2022 at 8:22 PM

    I missed this one at TCFF in October but while the trailer didn't grab me, I'm gonna give this a shot for Riz Ahmed!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, let's talk movies!
(comments are moderated to reduce spam)

Popular posts from this blog

Random Ramblings: The Radio Flyer Conundrum

-
Image
Recently, I was talking to someone about who I thought were the best child actors when I was also a child.  Two that really stood out to me were Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazello, and one film those two were in together was called Radio Flyer.  Then I was reminded about the uniqueness of this film. Instead of reviewing the film, I wanted to have an open discussion about the ending. It deals with a tough issue; child abuse. What I’ve noticed is the way that the film ends is interpreted many different ways, and the filmmakers never came forward to say what was right and wrong. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions on it. How did you interpret the ending? Obviously spoiler alerts will follow.. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Two young boys, Mikey (Wood) and Bobby (Mazello) move in with their single mother and her boyfriend, who refers to himself as ‘The King’. It doesn’t take long for The King to start physically abusing Bobby, and the
Read more

Indie Gems: Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

-
Image
Passionate about your profession? I had never heard of this film until it ended up on one of Jason's favorite horror movie lists around Halloween. It immediately sounded interesting to me, so of course I threw it in my Netflix queue. (and if I'm just now watching it after adding it around Halloween, you know how ridiculous my queue is) Taylor (Angela Goethals) is a journalist who, along with a film crew decides to follow around a serial killer named Leslie Vernon. (Nathan Baesel) He plans on doing the typical slasher thing - getting a bunch of drunk teens in an abandoned house and knocking them off one by one. He gets advice from a retired serial killer, Eugene (Scott Wilson) and is threatened by a man who's on to him, Doc Holloran (Robert Englund) Taylor and crew are there capturing it all. Leslie Vernon is fucking hilarious to start with, and clearly very passionate about what he does. He tells Taylor all of his secrets and can barely contain his excitemen
Read more

Please join me in my Favorite Movie Titles Blogathon!

-
Image
Earlier this week I made a post where I ran through the letters of the alphabet with my favorite movie titles. There were a few people that suggested I turn it into a blogathon, and I've never done that before. So here goes nothing! Since this is my first attempt at a blogathon, it's all pretty simple, and it's hopefully a quick post that everyone can join in. Rules: 1) Going through the alphabet, list your favorite movie title beginning with each letter.  2) You don't have to necessarily  like the movie to use it's title.  3) Use the banner at the top of this post in yours. 4) Please have submissions in by Friday, May 30th*. (But I'll be honest, if you send them to me after that date, I'll still add them to my post.) You can either leave a link to your post in the comments here or tweet it to me, ( @ramblingfilm )  Thanks everyone! :)  *I had to move the date back a week due to Photobucket threatening me with bandwidth issues. But
Read more