At First Light

There’s a suggestion, played out in the 1997 movie Contact, that if extraterrestrials became aware of our radio and TV broadcasts, they might respond in kind.

At First Light feels like that; as though someone watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Stranger Things, Escape to Witch Mountain and a few more, and shuffled them up.

Beamed here from another star, the message would be: We understand you! But if we assume the film is terrestrial, it’s a duller take-away: We have little original to say.

Stefanie Scott stars as Alex, a high-school student who encounters some weird lights one night after a kegger, and walks away with special powers, mostly involving magnetism.

Drawn to her as though made of iron himself is Sean (Théodore Pellerin), who’s looking after his younger brother with no other caregiver except a comatose grandmother. Sean tries to help Alex evade shadowy government forces. Both kids are aided by Cal (Saïd Taghmaoui), a citizen scientist in a plaid shirt and a beat-up four-by-four.

Writer/director Jason Stone hails from Johannesburg (Earth), and is thus surely aware that most of his images — nosebleeds that signal great power; flocks of birds flying in weird formations; convoys of black SUVs tearing across the dusty desert, haz-mat suits; etc. – are worn-out clichés of the genre. But he shows little interest in trying anything new; even the “three months later ...” coda felt like a textbook conclusion.

The actors are fine, though the screenplay does them no favours. At First Light may thus function as a useful primer for those completely unacquainted with sci-fi; the very young, say, or those from off-world.•½