Amy alien tale outta this world
Gripping and creepy adventure is
WE’VE seen spaceships touchdown on Earth lots of times but this brilliant sci-fi isn’t your typical alien invasion movie.
Sicario director Denis Villeneuve announces his aliens with a chorus of smartphone alerts as linguistics professor Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) tries to talk to her very distracted students.
Those pings announce shattering news. A dozen identical pebble-like spacecraft have dropped out of the sky and are hovering over locations across the planet.
Weirdly, the American one has swerved Washington and settled over an idyllic meadow in Montana, a first for ‘first contact’ movies.
Even weirder are the look of the things. The spaceships have a smooth dark surface, no windows, no blinking lights, and no laser guns.
Instead of the usual combo of dry ice, blinding light and a retractable ramp, the alien designers have plumped for a boring catflap shaped hole.
Those brave enough to climb into it can take a gravity-defying walk up a vertical shaft before being spun around to face a huge glass panel.
Behind it, a pair of squid-like aliens wobble about and occasionally waft out a creepy looking hand.
Understandably, this puts the willies up the entire human race.
As the aliens are more infuriating than warlike, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), recruits depressed language expert Louise to find out what they are up to.
Along with wisecracking physics whizz Dr Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Banks agrees to attempt a pow wow with the creatures.
These earlier scenes are gripping and wonderfully creepy. A brilliant Adams twitches and quivers with every new discovery as she heads towards the spaceship and walks up the walls of the shaft. Renner’s job is less demanding. But whenever the suspense needs to be punctured with a well-timed quip, he is up to the job. Adding to the tension is a haunting score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and some very moody lighting and camerawork. After Louise hits on a way to break the ice, the aliens answer back by inking weird circular symbols in the air. Louise’s studies involve examining the relationship between language and thought. To crack the code, she needs to understand how the aliens perceive the universe. The first phrase she translates is short, ambiguous and very ominous. And