Checked out the positively confounding sci-fi paranoia political thriller (I guess) Captive State this weekend. I’d only seen one trailer for this one and it’s coming out in the shadow of the latest Marvel blockbuster so it doesn’t seem they are trying too hard to sell it. And it’s kind of understandable… because as well as this movie is technically made, it’s a perplexing, audience-unfriendly flick.
Captive State is set nine years after aliens arrive on Earth and quickly squash any opposition. The governments of the world concede power to their new overlords (called The Legislature because they take over all government), the armies stand down, and the human collaborators get rich and the rest just get poor. The film follows a young man whose brother became famous by rebelling against the invaders before his resistance cell got crushed. John Goodman plays a cop/collaborator who spends his days monitoring the human population and keeping an eye on his dead partner’s son.
So… this movie gives us a lot of the alien backstory in brief text messages between resistance members. When the movie proper launches, the audience is largely left to fend for themselves as far as what’s going on. We get mumbled comments and piece together other world-building by happenstance, luck, and deduction. The film isn’t super interested in cluing us in on the daily lives of the population.
It does follow the young man mentioned earlier as he gets caught up in the resistance his brother had lead. But, quite suddenly, the movie just shifts into a story about the revived resistance cell, introducing a half dozen new characters who are never once named, who never once have a dialog scene that doesn’t involve their plan to strike back, and never once have any character introduction and growth. For thirty to forty minutes of screen time, we watch as they are activated, meet up, have their alien implants removed, and ready themselves to bomb a stadium and ignite a war against the aliens.
To be fair, the complete lack of characters here is clearly intentional. For whatever reason, they thought dropping the kid and Goodman’s character from the movie for this extended treatise on how to rebel against the alien oppressors was the way they wanted to make their movie. And, for what it is – and for as cryptic as it is – it’s certainly well made. The tension gets ramped up real high, the soundtrack has a cool propulsive beat, and… well.. they do their thing.
I will say the movie is well acted and they clearly are successfully telling the version of the story the way they want to so its hard to be mad a the flick. It’s clearly not incompetent… but it is perplexing. I’m happy it’s not a whiz-bang action flick… that’s fine… but the story structure decisions themselves are just baffling.
So, yeah…. I’d not recommend this to anyone except people who like indie sci-fi films and who have a lot of patience and who pay a lot of attention to the screen. You have to let the movie do what it does and not ask yourself what a “real” or “normal” movie might do. Then you might get something out of it. The film is certainly unique and competent… just a little baffling and a lot slow.
Score: 76