Encounter: Film Review

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Lucian-River Chauhan, Octavia Spencer

Director: Michael Pearce

A jumpy Riz Ahmed grounds a film that opens with sci-fi trappings before morphing into something distinctly more of this earth than out of this world.

Ahmed plays returning serviceman Malik Khan, who's served 10 tours of duty abroad, but who now believes the latest invasion is coming from the skies in the form of micro-organisms. Initially starting the film by blasting bugs as they scrabble out of walls and from behind wallpaper, Malik decides to go and liberate his two sons, Jay and Bobby, believing they could be targets for the invading forces.

Smuggling them away from his estranged wife and her new partner, Malik sets off on a road trip across Nevada to return to an army base, the last bastion he believes to be safe. However, soon Mailk's journey attracts unwanted attention and the trio finds their battle for survival taking them to darker places....

Encounter starts off as a sci-fi film, with microscopic shots showing bugs multiplying, attacking and settling into their hosts - but there's a tangible shift in the film very early on, which sets it more firmly in the territory of a psychological drama and a claustrophobic road trip.

Ahmed sells the mood exceptionally well, moving from listless and unnerved soldier with verve before settling in for someone who has to sell some of the script's narrative shortcomings. That he does so with ease is a credit to his enduring watchability and his penchant for roles that lift the everyman into extraordinary situations. It's easy to lose the humanity of a person in such films, but Ahmed sells the paranoia and trauma of a returned vet with complexity, flexing acting muscles that continue to cement him as one of the best for complicated roles.

It helps the child actors are of a calibre that matches both the petulance of youth but also the uncertainty of coming of age. Certainly the eldest Lucian-River Chauhan (who plays Jay) is an incredible watch throughout.

If Encounter is to falter though, it does so in its final act with a resolution that feels rote and which betrays the work done before. Certainly the film abandons its ambiguities later on in the piece for no real reason, jettisoning the unease which has transpired with dispiriting results and depressing familiarity.

But what lingers through this unpleasant aftertaste is a sign once again that Riz Ahmed remains stoically one of the best character actors working in and out of Hollywood, with a range that not only impresses but also continues to surprise and elevate whatever material he's given.

Encounter begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video from December 10.