Sundance Movie Review: 'Landscape With Invisible Hand' Depicts Insidious Invasion
Jan. 25 (UPI) -- " The Invisible Hand ," a sci-fi thriller about income inequality , premiered Monday at the Sundance Film Festival . It makes fun of sci-fi classics like RoboCop and District 9 .
In the year In 2036, five years have passed since the Vuvv first encountered aliens. Vuvv gave the world its technology and invited people to work for them.
Those who accepted the offer live in floating cities above the Earth, although visually they look smaller than the spaceships that have existed since Independence Day . But Campbell still lives in a land where people struggle to survive.
Beth Campbell (Tiffany Haddish) was a lawyer when these jobs were important, but she still owns the apartment where her children Adam (Asanthe Black) and Natalie (Brooklyn McKinsey) live with her.
At the school where Vuvv is currently overseeing the curriculum, Adam meets Chloe Marsh (Kylie Rogers). His father lost his job with Vuvv and his family became homeless.
At this house, Adam unwittingly lets Chloe live in the basement with her father (Josh Hamilton) and brother Hunter (Michael Gandolfini).
Landscape world building by an invisible hand makes a post-Vuvv future tangible, if not as immediate as Blade Runner . Details like the vuvv, which controls food production, an invisible but perfectly balanced food cube, give an idea of what life will be like in 2036.
Natalie starts a garden to use natural foods, but Adam thinks it doesn't taste very good. It's enough detail to draw the viewer in, but it also allows the film to move quickly through the plot.
The film shows how cities throw their waste to the surface, some of which is used for garbage on the ground. But the plot incorporates this dynamic organically as well.
Chloe offers to sell her and Adam advertising rights to Vuvv. Vuvuv pays good money to maintain human mating rituals, and this income allows the swamps to pay rent to Campbell.
So now you have a teen romantic comedy in a sci-fi movie that makes a statement about reality TV. Surveillance scenarios are a familiar theme in science fiction as well, but to Vuvv's credit, their purpose is to educate, not overwhelm.
Chloe and Adam inevitably disagree on how to handle vuvv. Khloe is ready for their latest, but proves too much for Adam. Also, he wants to have a real relationship with Chloe.
Unfortunately, Adam and Chloe quickly noticed something wrong with Vuvv's delivery. They are in breach of contract (a dense foreign contract with an English translation as thick as Apple's terms of service) so Vuvv is still in full control.
Vuvv offers an even weirder tweak that won't spoil this review. Landscaping by Mt. On Anderson's book, so your readers probably know this.
The Marsh family's tale of income inequality represents another interesting side. The Hunter and Mr. Swamps attack Beth despite the vuvv that put her in this situation.
The basement and first floor will be a microcosm of the country and the vuvv cities above. Someone is always better and someone is not always happy. The swamps continue to operate legally when you do them a favor.
So the Vuvv can tear humanity apart from within rather than violent invasion. Based on current events, it looks like humanity doesn't even want vuvv to have anything to do with us.
Vuvv looks so weird. It's not about artificial creatures, costumed actors or duplicitous visual effects.
Their language was strange, they couldn't learn it the way human fanatics learn Klingon. Vuvv wash their tentacles together to make words, but they have translation technology.
The Invisible Hand is a compelling entry into the science fiction canon. The wuvvs are interesting from the 1 percent and force the characters to make dramatic decisions, making the film unpredictable.
Fred Topple, who attended Ithaca College's film school, is a Los Angeles-based UPI entertainment writer. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a reviewer for Rotten Tomatoes since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more about his career in entertainment.
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