Since Jack Finney’s Body Snatchers was first published seventy years ago, there have been cinematic adaptations—both official and unofficial—set in a small town in the United States, in San Francisco, a military base, a high school, and so on. Each has a common core: a shape-shifting alien invasion force has infiltrated and taken over humanity. Zach Clarke’s Transformers plays loosely on this theme, adding a new wrinkle: this time, the entities hopping between bodies don’t necessarily intend to invade. They just want to coexist peacefully. But it turns out they may have chosen the wrong planet and/or species, because they’ve discovered that humanity today is probably too chaotic to be worth the trouble.
This is a good introduction to the kind of sly absurdity Clarke is aiming for here. But despite its fantastical appeal, this serialized narrative falls short of the strange, engaging black comedy that its writer-director has achieved in previous films like Little Sister and White Reindeer . Transformers is a shaggy dog story whose appeal wanes as you gradually realize it’s unlikely to go anywhere, a film that’s as light as sci-fi, satire, and sociopolitical satire. It’s unbalanced enough to hold your attention, but ultimately too underdeveloped to be a powerful reward.
Russell Mael of the band Sparks opens the proceedings as the nameless, genderless protagonist, who tells a backstory—over the course of the film’s present-day events—about life on a dying planet. Eventually, they and their lover are chosen for evacuation, traveling across the universe in separate travel capsules.
This lands the narrator in a wooded area of Illinois, where the pink smoke of a crashed spaceship attracts a hunter (Conrad Dean), who, unfortunately for him, becomes the first human body occupied by the alien, staggering like a zombie to a parked car where a woman in distress (Francesca Isabel Alamin) is about to give birth—a major upset for all involved. She discovers to her dismay that this promising rescuer has glowing blue eyes, becoming Ship #2.
Having learned how to act like a human, Francesca checks into a Motel 6, absorbing the language and culture through the in-room TV—even if the channel she's watching seems like a parody of Fox News. This goes smoothly enough until it turns out the police are looking for “her” (the abandoned newborn has been found), and receptionist Gene (Frank V. Ross) grows curious about this mysterious lone guest. Our heroine must escape once again, hitching a ride to a suburban housewife (Molly Blanc) whose body and home have been taken over.
This turns out to be a bad choice, as it shows that Carol and her husband Gordon (Mike Lopez) are not just charitable evangelical Christians. They are also QAnon-themed conspiracy theorists who are actually involved in a criminal plot that they believe will combat a “Satan-worshipping elite.” This greatly complicates the narrator’s reunion with “My Love,” a shapeshifting creature with neon pink eyes who appears in one human form (a bus driver played by Jacqueline Haas) and then morphs into another. Trying to keep a low profile, the duo instead find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy involving the governor (Keith Kelly), the FBI, and the national media.
The idea of aliens seeking asylum has real potential, but it finds itself dragged into the sectarian extremes of our strange political moment, which, of course, makes no sense to them. But Transformers never quite gets crazy or critical enough to fully seize that opportunity. The closest thing to a screen version of it is not Body Snatchers but John Sayles’s The Brother from Another Planet, but without the film’s warmth (or a compelling central performance like Joe Morton’s) to balance the tepid, off-kilter humor. The voiceover text, narrated by Miles, is a hilarious mix of vulgarity and surrealism that nothing here actually comes close to.
The grotesque corpse nature of the identity-swap premise makes Clarke’s film enjoyable, though it ultimately leaves a very thin impression for such a bold conceit. There’s not enough palpable emotion here to make the plight of the lovers on the run from outer space feel as poignant as it ultimately is intended to be, and the social commentary elements promise more than they deliver. Skillfully acted and made, “The Becomers” is a clever idea that feels like it’s still in the making by the time it reaches its conclusion.
Dark Star Pictures opened the Chicago-shot indie at New York's Village Cinema this week, with bookings in other cities to follow, and an on-demand release on September 24.
