The pretty cool conceit behind this movie is that the premise is communicated in the interstices, via text infodumps, background chatter and a 'wake up, sheeple!' style podcaster (David Hemphill). The meat of the movie is split in between four shorts, each one set at a specific point during this bizarre invasion, with a focus on the small picture that obscures as much as it illuminates, keeping things mysterious.
The first segment, 'Lockdown', follows a bunch of high-schoolers stuck in detention right when the invasion begins. It's got a nice paranoid feel as the kids hear sirens and helicopters zoom by outside, their phones all going off at once from within a locked cupboard, and their professor abandons them. Pretty shitty of him, to be honest. But unfortunately it quickly loses steam and kind of flounders when the kids run face to face with one of the newly arrived doors.
Then it's time for 'Knockers', which is the dumb name given to the people who go into doors to try to document everything within for science. This is dangerous, we learn, because most of these explorers succumb to some form of psychosis if they stay inside for longer than ten minutes or so.
It begins with some rather beautiful nature footage, as one of the knockers (Lina Esco) muses on her overbearing life partner (Josh Peck)... who's also a knocker. Very Terrence Mallik. But the main influence here is quickly revealed to be Alex Garland's Annihilation as they venture into the other side of a door that's bisected a beautiful woodland house. This is the clear standout story in the movie; The alternate house the party of knockers ventures into is eery, weird, and pretty cool, and while the relationship drama ends predictably, it's narratively satisfying in a way that the rest of the film doesn't really ever manage again.
In 'Lamaj' we catch up with the deadbeat teacher who abandoned the kids in 'Lockdown' (Kyp Malone). He's gone full survivalist out in the woods and has managed to communicate with one of the Doors using some homebrew equipment. The Door is surprisingly friendly and communicative - it's all fairly interesting until he invites a fellow scientist and her plus one, and then some extremely clunky relationship drama ensues again.
Finally it's Midnight Mike's turn, the guy who runs the podcast we've been listening to throughout the movie. He gets an interview with an expert on parallel realities (Darius Levanté), who acts like a spaced-out cult leader and provides some more information on what may be going on. Again, it's kind of interesting - anything that reminds me of Childhood's End will make me perk up and pay attention - but dramatically it's completely inert, and that's a terrible way to wrap up the film.
This is a tough movie to gauge. I really enjoyed its general vibe - and despite a very low budget, it always looks great, with 'Knockers' being again a highlight. I also dug the experimental nature of the filmmaking, which mixes in text, drone shots, and abstract images with its narrative with abandon. The scripts (all written by different people) vary wildly in quality, but none of them are particularly great, with some incredibly clunky exposition (the way characters just blurt out their motivations in Lamaj is near unforgivable). As science fiction none of it has any rigour, nor does it explore any of its ideas satisfactorily, but I do appreciate how much leeway it leaves by design for you to fill in between the lines.
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