Despite Lots of Potential and A Great Cast, Captive State Is An Underwhelming Attempt At Sci-Fi Social Commentary

At one point in time, Captive State was one of my most anticipated movies of Summer 2018! Yes, in a dark era before I knew what Monster Factory or Lil' Nas X was, Captive State was slated for an August 17, 2018 theatrical release and I was eagerly awaiting this new directorial effort from Rupert Wyatt given how much I adored his 2011 feature Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But then Focus Features delayed the title for March 2019 where it came and went so quickly at the domestic box office that I never got a chance to see it in theaters. Finally seeing it now, alas, Captive State turns out to be a movie so messy that it would have been a dissapointment even if I had never heard of it before prior to watching it.


Aliens have come to Earth but unlike in traditional movies where we fight the invading forces, Captive State explores a version of America that has existed under the control of aliens for about seven years now. Not everybody is cool with aliens who do malicious things like track people through bug implants in their necks and so a rebel force has cropped up to take down the aliens. Orphan Gabriel Drummond (Ashton Sanders), whose brother Rafe Drummond (Johnathan Majors) died in a legendary attempt at destroying the aliens, wants nothing to do with this rebelling force, he's content to just look out for himself and his girlfriend. But eventually, he finds out that a big plan is in motion to defeat the aliens once and for all despite the protests of Chicago Police Commander William Mulligan (John Goodman).

Captive State's premise that begins in media res into a world under alien control is a tantalizing one and there are facets of the production that fulfill this premise. The production design used to bring 2028 Chicago under alien control to life certainly conveys the idea of everything going to seed. You can practically feel the scratchy rust collecting on any metal in sight while the way characters casually stroll to a 9-to-5 job through delipidated environments straight out of I Am Legend is quietly chilling. Under extra-terrestrial control, Earth is crumbling around the humans still inhabiting it, but they still go about doing monotonous jobs. The aliens don't have to alter people's brains to stop them from fighting back, just implementing a conventional lifestyle that provides an easier alternative to rebelling will take care of any insurgency.

Unfortunately, that sort of subtly unnerving detail isn't found in abundant supply in Captive State's script, penned by Rupert Wyatt and Erica Beeney. Instead, the writing leans far heavier on messy storytelling that disappoints for a number of reasons. For one thing, its attempts at social commentary range from unimaginative to laughable, the latter emerging in a note of aliens now doing "off-world deportations" of human beings. How does that even work? When you deport someone, you're supposed to, in theory, send them back to their country of origin. What humans on Earth are from other worlds we could deport them to? Are there people from Jupiter that Tucker Carlson lambasts on Fox News while maintaining a constant expression of bewilderment? Between this and the inter-dimensional "caravan" reference in a recent episode of The Twilight Zone, maybe we should just tell real stories of immigrant experiences instead of trying to do clumsy cutesy sci-fi references to those experiences that end up saying nothing of substance on the matter of immigration.

Even worse than muddled attempts at social commentary is that Captive State's story never seems to settle on whether or not this is a traditional story about a young kid learning to fight for a cause bigger than himself or a Robert Altman-esque ensemble feature. All the pieces are in place for the former type of storytelling, but Gabriel proves to be pretty inconsequential to the overall plot, to the point that he vanishes for a large section of the second act while hiding out in an abandoned toll booth(?) from a bunch of alien drones. Captive State never really commits to the character of Gabriel and that leaves his potentially interesting character arc feeling more inert than it should.

As an ensemble piece, Captive State doesn't fare much better, though there are interesting moments to be found when it jumps around various perspectives. An extended sequence showing a group of rebels preparing to pull off a kidnapping scheme brings out editing, camerawork and even music courtesy of composer Rob Simonsen that briefly turns Captive State into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi heist film. It's an intriguing digression, but it's a subplot that ends up fizzling out in an underwhelming manner. John Goodman's William Mulligan is another character with moments of promise that never go anywhere remarkable. The always reliable John Goodman delivers the best performance of the whole film in this role but it's in the service of a character whose eventual arc goes in pretty predictable directions.

Similarly derivative are the aliens, who look the aliens from A Quiet Place crossbred with a hedgehog. They eventually bring in alien troops that look like soldiers from Halo that made me ocne again yearn for movie aliens that dared to be colorful. Remember the Mars Attacks! aliens? They were brightly colored, had nifty capes and were a lot more interesting visually than the aliens in Captive State.  Another waste of potential found in Captive State is the presence of Madeleine Brewer and KiKi Layne in throwaway supporting roles they clearly filmed before delivering their remarkable 2018 lead performances in Cam and If Beale Street Could Talk, respectively. Boy do I wish they both got more to do here, though Lord knows they're not the only aspects of Captive State that I wish were better.