Occupation: Rainfall (2021)

                             Occupation: Rainfall (2021)

Occupation: Rainfall review: Australia is primed for a well-made alien invasion film. This is not it

Historically, when a sequel to a movie was greenlit, you'll rest assured this was because the primary film made a tidy profit for its investors. With the arrival of streaming services like Netflix, this is often not necessarily the case. And Occupation: Rainfall shows us this. Occupation (2018) made barely anything at the box office or through international sales, and yet became a surprise hit on Netflix within the US. Writer-director Luke Sparke was ready to leverage this success to fund this sequel. Although it's a way bigger budget, Occupation: Rainfall is marginally worse than its predecessor. Occupation was ready to make the foremost of its dramatically compelling narrative of a gaggle of survivors banding together to resist an alien invasion, and therefore the new film flies where Occupation ended. It’s two years after the primary film, and therefore the refore the war between “the resistance” and the “greys” (the aliens) rages on. Its main narrative follows Matt Simmons (Dan Ewing) and alien Gary (Lawrence Makoare) as they travel from Sydney to Alice Springs to seek out out about “Rainfall,” an alien super weapon sent to Earth eons earlier. On the way, they devour Peter Bartlett (Temuera Morrison) who presides over a rural community established within the first film. Meanwhile, commanding officer Hayes (Daniel Gillies) oversees an enormous underground resistance compound, performing secret evil experiments on captured aliens so as to develop a weapon which will win the war. Virtuous Amelia Chambers (Jet Tranter) takes up her own war against Hayes, and therefore the epic existential war between aliens and humans is mirrored in these internal tensions within the resistance. The whole thing is bookended by two drawn out, noisy battle sequences between the humans and aliens. If you haven’t seen the primary film, it all seems fairly shrill and incomprehensible. A failure of spectacle There are fantastic alien invasion films that make the foremost of the conflicts between different species, and, in this, say something interesting and original about life on Earth. John Carpenter’s cult hit They Live (1988) brilliantly critiques American class inequality through its exploration of invasion, and therefore the Day the world Stood Still (1951) says more about the atomic age at the start of the conflict than virtually the other film of the amount . Then there are the more tedious variety: epic war films during which the antagonists happen to seem weird and talk during a weird way. These are often effectively done, as in Starship Troopers (1997), but Occupation: Rainfall just doesn't have the budget to fulfil its premise. And without a sufficient budget, this type of epic cinematic spectacle inevitably fails A budget of A$25 million makes it, by Australian standards, a really well resourced film (Occupation was made for A$6 million). But Occupation: Rainfall tries to emulate its much bigger-budgeted brethren like Avatar (2009), made for US$237 million, instead of making its own mark. And this may always be a losing game when it involves economies of scale. The visual effects here may are passable 25 years ago (and check out about the extent of the Australian television program Spellbinder (1995-97) in places), but are laughably bad by contemporary standards. The spaceships attacking Sydney within the opening battle sequence appear as if they’ve been rendered using Paint 3D, and that we can never suspend our disbelief when watching the alien companion animals accompanying Matt and Gary on their trip. For some projects this wouldn’t matter, but building a convincing and immersive world is completely critical for this type of fantasy narrative. Occupation: Rainfall just doesn’t use its budget creatively or effectively – unlike, for instance , Leigh Whannell’s superb Australian science-fiction film Upgrade (2018), with a budget of but a 3rd of Occupation: Rainfall. Light and dark The narrative is unclear and underdrawn. The relationships between the humans and therefore the aliens isn't clearly delineated. There are not any clear back stories to the characters which may anchor viewers to the planet (unlike a movie like Alien Nation (1988), which treads similar territory). It’s not all bad. Aspects of the planning are good – there’s an appealing colourfully kitsch quality to the lighting – and therefore the main narrative structure of a pair of mismatched buddies travelling across country facing numerous hazards will always be a winner. The look of the greys is appealingly bodgie – their costumes and laser guns appear as if objects your mum may need made you for book week within the 1980s – and Dan Gillies and Temuera Morrison give strikingly assured performances. But the strength of those actors backfires in terms of the film as an entire , as we become acutely conscious of the house and Away-ish acting of most of the supporting cast. This was an enormous enough film to throw Ken Jeong in at the top once they reach Pine Gap, but even his comic relief seems lame, doing little to enhance the film. The bigger-than-usual allow an Australian film also plays against Occupation: Rainfall: it makes one painfully conscious of the waste. Imagine what percentage better films could are made with this money! It is great to ascertain a sincere genre film beginning of Australia. But Occupation: Rainfall becomes tedious pretty quickly. Given its colonial history, it might seem Australia is primed for a thoughtful, well-made film about alien invasion. this is often not it. Occupation: Rainfall is in Australian cinemas now