As the narrator (Sparks’ Russell Mael) tells his story of star-crossed love many moons away, we watch as violence (awkwardly comical, violent all the same) is wrought upon random, unsuspecting souls. Is the brightly lit, eye-holed entity taking over these bodies the same character as the disembodied voice we hear? Maybe. Hopefully.
Why? Because that would mean it isn’t acting out of aggression. It would merely be an alien creature come to Earth, jumping from host to host until it can reunite with its lover. When one body no longer proves sufficient, it must discard and seek another. When it settles on one that works, it lays low in hiding––using the cash from the pockets of its victims to find its way onto the Internet so it can buy contact lenses that hide its glow without the need of sunglasses. Unfortunately, however, Earth (and especially America) is hardly the “safest” place to hide.
Writer-director Zach Clark has seemingly worked backwards from the QANON chaos that is present-day American politics to reverse-engineer the worst possible scenario for a refugee alien trying to stay under the radar. As such, The Becomers proves as much the romance of its billing as a comically warped satire on the sheer lunacy of certain groups we’ve all had the displeasure of interacting with via social media.
It only makes sense, then, that Clark’s film should debut on the heels of a Vanity Fair article reporting on the legacy of Kenneth Johnson’s miniseries V. I couldn’t stop thinking how Johnson describes the fan mail he still receives today: split between praise for his effective warning of what a fascistic government takeover of our democracy would look like and thanks from delusional crackpots for “exposing” the truth that reptilian creatures already walk among us in human skin.
That’s not to say the aliens in The Becomers are malicious or even looking for power and conquest. Yes, they kill humans to use their bodies as a means of disguise, but they don’t do so for sport. To truly watch “Carol” (Molly Plunk) and “Gordon” (Mike Lopez)––the bodies our lovers inhabit together the longest––is to see two smitten beings who couldn’t care less about anything but each other.
Until, of course, the world forces them to realize the real Carol and Gordon were hiding their own nefarious secrets. Secrets that have old friends snooping around for answers “Carol” and “Gordon” don’t have. Secrets that new friends are ready to unveil with or without “Carol” and “Gordon’s” help. The result is thus more Coneheads than V, “Carol” and “Gordon” doing their best to feign understanding while blatantly lying their way through vague assumptions once circumstances start to prove they chose the least-anonymous hosts possible.
Add the fact that the only television programming they have to better learn English is alt-right “news” and you can begin to guess the sort of out-there cultish thinking we’ve all walked into. I wouldn’t say anything that’s ultimately revealed is surprising––Clark does well to keep his clues out in the open––but a lot of it is shocking insofar as how wild he’s willing to take his chicken-or-egg conceit. (Do aliens embodying politicians confirm idiotic conspiracy theories that demons have snatched our neighbors’ bodies or can the discovery just be purely coincidental?)
Plunk and Lopez are more than game for the idiosyncratic machinations of existing in unfamiliar skin (as well as the extremes of portraying aliens written without “human” boundaries) and the whole sustains that same air of artifice with a supporting cast proving as confused as us.
It definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but those who get on its frequency should have a whale of a time.
The Becomers had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival.