Culture

Rating: A+

Harvesting human flesh for your alien homeworld’s meat industry is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. Scarlett Johansson (or ScarJo, as she likes to be called) plays an enigmatic seductress that has a disgusting job to do here on Earth: luring local Glaswegian men into her van with flirtatious chit chat, and driving them to her scary meat grinder house, where she proceeds to get naked with them until they die. Naturally, not one of these men ever protests, because, come on, ScarJo beeeuuubs!

When you know ahead of time that this movie was filmed using hidden camera footage of real people from the street, it makes it shocking to watch. One assumes the CGI and full frontal male nudity scenes were filmed after informing the men about the production, but other than that, it’s terrifying to see her messing with real people’s heads. Let’s just say this project probably wouldn’t get the approval of the ethics committee.

The amazing thing is that this story works despite only a tiny amount of dialogue and absolutely zero exposition. To find meaning (and plot!) in this film, we have to think literally, laterally, and deeply about what we see. We follow the alien carrying out her meat grinding function until she catches a glimpse of herself (itself?) in a mirror, and is suddenly confronted with that ultimate existential question: who is looking back? Thus begins the incredible journey of this film, the opportunity for an alien to explore the concept of the self in our contemporary world, and choose not to do what it is told. This theme of disobedience, to me, immediately red flags The Matrix trilogy, a thematic homage perhaps reinforced when the alien tries to experience chocolate cake and orgasms. This alien has the appearance of a human, and may even be able to converse and feel sensations, but through its behaviour it reveals itself to us to be horrifyingly lacking in the most essential human trait: empathy. This is a simply astounding film, for philosophers and ScarJo anatomy enthusiasts alike.