Invasion's first three episodes -- "Love of My Life," "The Probe," and "Goodbye, Teacher!" -- are now streaming on Apple TV+. Below is a spoiler-free review.
Apple TV+’s Invasion is a wildly ambitious series, described by co-creator Simon Kinberg as a fusion between the Oscar-winning, globe-spanning political drama Babel and H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. While the effort is admirable, the pieces don’t quite fit together well enough in the show’s slow-moving three-episode premiere.
Invasion takes its time in introducing its large cast of characters scattered across the world experiencing the alien assault in very different ways. Yet in an effort to avoid recreating the typical alien attack plots, Kinberg and co-creator David Weil wind up just producing a mashup of prestige drama cliches.
The first episode, “Love of My Life” is the roughest part of the premiere, focused mostly on Jim Bell Tyson (Sam Neill), a small-town sheriff on the cusp of retiring looking to solve one last case to bring meaning to his life and career. It feels like the writers are striving for the mood of No Country for Old Men, with an aging lawman confronting evil he’s largely powerless to fight, but juxtaposing an extraterrestrial mystery atop scenes of white supremacist meth dealers and Neill’s mournful monologues about faith feels terribly forced. That plot pauses with a cliffhanger at the end of episode one, with Neill not reappearing in the following two episodes, and the show is stronger for it.
Also too ponderous is the show’s pair of big relationship dramas. One focuses on Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna), a Japanese aerospace technician having an affair with an astronaut about to leave Earth for the International Space Station. It has the feel of a moody indie flick, filled with mooning, brooding, and poor coping mechanisms. Considering how the space narrative feels like it has the most potential to push the plot along, it’s frustrating to watch Mitsuki spend so much time paralyzed by her emotions, even if those feelings are understandable. At least when she snaps into action, the show comes into focus, transforming into a compelling thriller.
The other rocky love story surrounds Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani), a Syrian refugee living in America with her pathetic husband Ahmed (Firas Nassar) and their young kids. Their plot feels like part of the recent wave of dramas like Marriage Story and Scenes from a Marriage, chronicling the melodramatic disintegration of a relationship where the messy emotions all have to be put aside to protect the children from descending chaos.
The early part of the drama is especially rote, filled with over-the-top scenarios and dull lines like Ahmed telling Aneesha the primary reason he’s attracted to the Instagram influencer he’s having an affair with is “she’s not you.” But once unexplained explosions start racking their neighborhood, the plot takes a turn reminiscent of the classic The Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Numerous films like The Avengers and Godzilla have used invading aliens and monsters as a metaphor for the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001, but Invasion makes the comparison explicit as Malik’s neighbors start questioning if the damage is a result of a terrorist attack and looking with suspicion at their Middle Eastern neighbors. Centering the impact on Americans who are effectively doubly victimized shows the real potential of Invasion’s vision.
The second episode kicks off two new plots, a sort of Lord of the Flies tale of a British prep school field trip gone horribly wrong and a war story following Trevante Ward (Shamier Anderson), an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan. That later plot instantly dates the show, but after 20 years of war, the writers had presumably felt confident any near future would still involve Americans fighting there.
These plots provide a bit of desperately needed comic relief through the crude humor of young British boys and the bored antics of the soldiers. Even when the tone shifts, Trevante’s story remains incredibly compelling, showing tense chaos as the American soldiers confront equally perplexed Afghans trying to find the source of an attack. Anderson delivers the best performance of the show so far, whether he’s joking around with his men or quietly bonding with a bedouin as they share intimate details of their lives in languages the other man can’t understand.
Invasion looks great, making the most out of its highly varied settings and blockbuster-quality special effects. It’s also doling out plenty of unsettling hints at what’s happening, from kids having spontaneous nosebleeds to odd messages from space. Hopefully the slowly unfolding plot will prove worth the wait.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3E3SLyv
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