Review: Encounter

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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

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