Image courtesy of Quiver Distribution
THE OUTER THREAT— 3 STARS
There’s more than enough room in the genre of science fiction to appreciate a movie like The Outer Threat that is science-forward more than fiction-forward. Take the public-rattling potential discovery of the existence of extraterrestrial life, something hot on the minds of moviegoers right now with Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day and going back as far as the 19th century with H.G. Wells’s beloved novel The War of the Worlds. Those two stories, and many others, thrust the aliens and their assumed superior capabilities right into our presence, triggering huge confrontations.
LESSON #1: SCIENCE OVER SPECTACLE— While those stories lean heavily on the entertaining spectacle of direct human/alien interaction, most scientists in the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) or METI (messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence) fields bank on theories that any real evidence we, as a planet, will get will come from signals more than flying saucers and little green men arriving on Earth. Similar to Contact, Clara, and Ad Astra that came before it, The Outer Threat follows that more plausible and intelligent path and still develops solid suspense.
Set around the present day, government-backed astronomer Daniel Ashford (Mark O’Brien, recently seen in Nuremberg) manages an old telescope set up in a forested rural area from a Cold War-era bunker underneath a shed on his farmhouse’s property. His longtime professional and romantic partner, Michelle Guthrie (Constance Wu of Hustlers and Crazy Rich Asians), is a retired astrophysicist now doing most of the country-centered raising of their two children, Francois (Castlemont’s Isaac Smelcer-Zhang) and Maddy (first-timer Callista Crowe). She stresses the quiet, isolated life they’ve created while he’s still obsessively striving with the SETI/METI mission even on the weekends.
When Daniel receives an ominous signal report from an exoplanet in the Goldilocks zone of an observable star, he thinks it’s more than an anomaly. Daniel is convinced this is it—real contact from an intelligent world—and guards this information with classified secrecy. When he assembles the data paperwork and gets a face-to-face meeting with his soon-to-be-retiring NORAD supervisor, Teddy (Murray Furrow of the 12 Monkeys TV series), he’s summarily dismissed.
LESSON #2: THE DANGER OF FALSE HOPES— Much of Teddy’s rebuttal to Daniel speaks to false hopes and how mathematically unlikely the SETI quest is against the size and distances within the known and unknown universe. This highlighted viewpoint of false hope in The Outer Threat is also something echoed to him by Michelle, who has given up on this same cosmic chase. She warns about how what was once passion—something they shared academically—can veer to become an obsession that distracts him and noticeably takes him away from his family. The wise woman is not wrong, and it weighs on their relationship.
LESSON #3: WHAT IF A FALSE HOPE COMES TRUE?— That said, what if a false hope comes true? After getting a second opinion from Michelle’s estranged father, Ming (Oscar Hsu of TV’s The Copenhagen Test), and eventually a third from Michelle herself, Daniel’s data is legitimate. Flexing the hypothetical science once again into The Outer Threat, this planet appears to be utilizing Dyson sphere structures to capture the radiant energy of its nearby sun. Uncovering such sophistication, he’s sitting on the greatest scientific discovery in history, and his feelings of fulfillment from that false hope are overwhelming. Now, he and Michelle weigh the possible ramifications of such a monumental discovery. Who do they contact? Who is safe to contact? Should it remain a secret?
LESSON #4: WHAT WOULD THE WORLD DO WITH THIS NEWS?— Hashed out by these two experts in their field, The Outer Threat broaches the hypothetical and ethical conversation of the possible panic and paranoia from the knowledge of intelligent beings beyond our planet. There is a split between Michelle and Daniel, where she thinks the world wouldn’t be able to handle it while Daniel tries to cite a lack of faith in humanity. Breaking an agreement with Michelle, Daniel sends the information via email to Teddy and the government higher-ups, setting off instantaneous consequences.
At this stage of The Outer Threat, swarming drones arrive on their property, and an increase in observation balloons appears in the skies. The surrounding area is struck with power grid failures, gas shortages, and flooded mobile and radio networks, right on queue with Ben Fox’s (Middle Life) a-touch-too-ominous musical score stings. However, all of these events and occurrences in the infrastructure are not concurrent with a government response, meaning something else must be pushing this. Nevertheless, this situation forces the family to head upstate to seek refuge with Ming.
A bigger and louder movie than The Outer Threat would be showing TV news coverage in the background to dump exposition and show off cataclysmic events elsewhere for dramatic effect. The most writer-director William Woods (The Kid Detective) veers is with a traveling encounter with character actor extraordinaire William Fichtner playing a guarded, but benevolent diner owner. Through a momentary collaboration bonding with Constance Wu’s matriarch, extra details about the seeming beginnings of societal collapse come across as more personal and cautious. Yet, tangible danger is still possible when those suspicions and asides come from a professional movie villain like Fichtner, cropping up in the middle of a movie teetering on a desperate edge.
To see The Outer Threat contain its plotted adventure in this domestic setting grounds its focus on this family unit with that aforementioned spine of science. While it might not be as flashy as the works of Spielberg or Zemeckis, William Woods’s entire approach of knowledge over exhibition feels shrewd and astute. Even if that was done for budget limitations, the filmmaker found a smart, principled core and made the most of it. An indie effort that still makes room for the surreal science fiction ideas deserves to be intellectually appreciated.
Image courtesy of Quiver Distribution
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