We enter Steve Pink’s Terrestrial with a tour through an opulent home––broken glass on the floor, a blood trail towards the door, and Allen (Jermaine Fowler) sat against the wall in a frozen panic. Before we can even begin to presume what might have occurred, however, we’re whisked to a car inhabited by three of his old college friends: Maddie (Pauline Chalamet), Ryan (James Morosini), and Vic (Edy Modica). En route to see Allen for the first time in years, they’re worried about the state in which they might find him. His mother called in a fright about him potentially being suicidal, so it’s more than a little surprising when he greets them outside his giant mansion with joy.
Our assumption is thus that Samuel Johnson and Connor Diedrich’s script is teasing us with a possible future. A glimpse of what might arise once the façade of Allen’s happiness makes way for the truth of his hidden sorrow. It makes sense until we learn more about the television show playing on a loop inside a room dedicated to its literary and cinematic history. Allen is a huge fan of The Neptune Cycle and relates to its alien race spying on Earth to discover an unlikely hero to take back home. What starts as him gushing about his passion soon gives way to a strange defensiveness, though. Weirder still are Allen’s odd mannerisms and mood swings. Perhaps that opening actually revealed the past.
This is a genre film taking big narrative and tonal swings, so the chance Allen is walking himself off a cliff of lies to a bloody end is just as likely as him being chosen and replaced by an alien at a moment of desperate need. It’s a question that lingers for the entire first act––Allen is truly making the wildest decisions. He tells Vic he made breakfast the next morning, only for her to find a plate of pickles and string cheese in the kitchen. That’s some extraterrestrial-pretending-to-be-human nonsense if I’ve ever seen it. Pair that with a short fuse morphing back into a smile as fast as it turned to rage, and body-snatching seems reasonable. Until the first of many new discoveries changes everything.
It’s a reveal that provides an answer to our original question while introducing many more upon rewinding for the additional context we never fathomed needing. The result is an even darker tale. Allen is still drowning, but the water is deeper than merely depression. No, he’s gone and put himself into a situation that was fully outside his control from the get-go and only seems to grow worse with every passing minute. What began as a victimless crime quickly transforms into a full-blown hostage situation, more and more characters coming out of the woodwork to chip away at what little sanity Allen had left. Once that’s gone, the line separating reality and fiction disappears altogether.
Pink amplifies this fractured psychosis by splicing in scenes of the show that mimic what’s happening to Allen. That means spending time with the crudely vintage sci-fi antics of Taylor Gray and Violet Beane on a CRT screen as they traverse the cosmos under the stewardship of the Voxxxti (the director’s Hot Tub Time Machine pals Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry also make appearances). Think of it as a defense mechanism. When things go wrong, Allen’s only way to keep from breaking down is to filter things through this fictional lens. Death becomes an illusion. Crimes become necessity. Neptune Cycle creator SJ Purcell (Brendan Hunt) would be proud if he didn’t have his own problems.
Terrestrial wears a pitch-black humor on its sleeve, a fact that won’t prepare you for how bleak the filmmakers are willing to run. Right when you think things are falling apart perfectly for Allen to ease out of trouble (or, at the very least, mitigate it so his friends can escape) Pink and company hit the gas and ensure the consequences of his actions land as hard and painful as possible. I love the willingness to go for the jugular and really push this character to a point of no return as far as being unable to accept what he has wrought. It provides Fowler a great acting showcase, demanding he constantly flip between devastation and an uncanny calm. The death of a dream can sometimes be impossible to bear.
Hunt adds some welcome deadpan to the proceedings as Purcell’s issues merge with Allen’s, lending the right amount of drama to contrast the otherwise absurdist nature of Fowler’s off-putting hosting style. Modica injects broader humor, Rob Yang brings an unnaturally pleasant air of danger, and Morosini and Chalamet supply an uncertainty to feed Allen’s derangement. The script proposes multiple ways out just a moment too late, thus increasing the cost of Allen’s recklessness––his only real exit returns to that initial choice between death and abduction. But it’s no longer a choice; the former’s inevitability ultimately renders the latter essential.
Terrestrial premiered at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival.
The post Fantasia Review: Terrestrial is a Pitch-Black Sci-Fi Comedy first appeared on The Film Stage.
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