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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thought it was fantastic. Opening with a witchy ritual out of the Necronomicon was a strong way to infuse Lovecraftian supernatural malice throughout the alien story.
Nic Cage kills it as the dad, and all (3) kids are fantastic. The mom was incredible, both as a regular mom + as a horrifying mutated form.
If you think about it, the movie really lays out the rules for you. We know the color melts things together because we saw the alpacas. So it shouldn’t be a huge surprise when the son + mom are melted together.
The mom creature attacking the daughter was pretty amazing too. Creepily shot. Definitely learned some lessons from the Babadook.
Excellent build up! It takes enough time to get everyone introduced but not too much. Then the movie takes some (well-paced) sweet time to to get to the climax where everything starts going hella sideways quick.
Lavinia (I think was the daughter’s name) was more than good enough for what the movie needed. The disintegration and subsuming was pretty great.
Tommy Chong as the sidekick guru was fun also. The right level of weird and off-kilter for it to work. Creepy recordings.
I liked that her spell protected Lavinia, but not her family, and not in the way she expected it to. Very Lovecraft, but also a bit of Poe.
The shot of its world that the hydrologist sees at the end was pretty great. The whole thing was pretty great, to be honest.