Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A decorated Marine goes on a rescue mission to save his two young sons from an unhuman threat. As their journey takes them in increasingly dangerous directions, the boys will need to leave their childhoods behind.
Encounter starts with a genuinely intriguing premise blending alien paranoia with a grounded family drama, but the narrative pivot — revealing the threat is largely internal/psychological — feels undercooked and leaves the alien framing frustratingly unresolved. Riz Ahmed delivers a committed, emotionally raw performance that elevates the material considerably, carrying the film through its weaker stretches. The cinematography is competent and functional without being distinctive. The story concept has some novelty in its bait-and-switch genre subversion but doesn't fully capitalize on it. The ending deflates rather than resolves, trading ambiguity for an unsatisfying emotional beat that doesn't earn its sentiment.