Hollywood has given us some awesome concepts for alien species and their takeovers/engagements with Earthlings. Films like Arrival, Life, and Annihilation come to mind, having added innovative intergalactic entities to the sci-fi cinematic cannon. These films also embody a refreshing take of the sub-genre of geo-horror, utilizing stunning frames of eccentric aliens or stoic visuals of a manipulated Earth to arouse sensations of dread and moral conflictions. In such movies, humans face more enthralling queries about their physical and philosophical place in the universal order. Humanity places itself at the top of the food chain, constantly underestimating the power and potential of our natural environment and fellow animals. Because of our enhanced intelligence, our construction of civilized society, and our egotistically inflated sense of self, it’s hard to imagine or reimagine a world where co-existing as sub-superior or inferior beings presents itself as some otherworldly fantasy. Matthew and Kevin McManus propose a contorted story of aliens observing and dissecting Earthly lifeforms using similar methods to our own in this bizarre and delightfully twisted tale with their film The Block Island Sound.
In The Block Island Sound, we follow Harry (Chris Sheffield), a compulsive man but dedicated caretaker for his mentally depreciating father. Harry keeps himself guarded when dealing with his older sisters, Audry (Michaela McManus) and Jen (Heidi Niedermeyer), who question his ability to differentiate from the Block Island community they grew up in and properly care for their dad and himself. Surrounded by a dreary island community of fewer than 1000 people, Harry distracts himself with alcohol and conspiracy theory junkie friends, distancing himself from the reality of his mentally ill father, Tom (Neville Archambault), and his own inner demons.
When late-night disappearances and uncharted boat rides result in the alarming behavior of Tom leading up to his outlandish, watery death, Harry falls into the same pattern. Up until this point, aliens are nowhere in the picture, leaving only the uncanny natural phenomena such as crows with smashed in heads, male deers entering main roads, and dozen tons of dead fish washing ashore, as mysterious clues. Harry and his sisters clash over their dad’s death with Harry becoming the black sheep of the family, believed to have the same mysterious mental illness as their dad. Concerned for her brother’s safety, Audry does her best to keep their small family together, reluctantly remaining on Block Island alongside her daughter, Emily (Matilda Lawler), keeping a careful eye on her brother. Things take an abstract turn as it’s revealed that Harry, like his father, has succumbed to the sublime and entrancing electromagnetic capabilities of an explorative, unidentified alien species. The cryptic alien race appears underwater as an opaque mossy glowing mist with the power to collect animals and humans to anatomize.
It’s human nature to want to rationalize and compartmentalize our fears and anxieties by placing the blame or the heaviness of our afflictions onto something or someone else. But, this mentality presents as a lack of imagination. In the film, Harry lacks imagination in believing that his father or himself could be anything other than mentally unhinged. Audry lacks imagination in accepting the possibility of the paranormal being a reality. When the extraterrestrial entities abduct the local wildlife, altering the ecosystemic responses to their manipulations, Harry finds himself caving into his conspiracy theorist friend’s constant theorizing and nagging, in search of answers to his heightened paranormal anxiety. He connects these mass animal deaths to a host of other international occurrences. Realizing that these instances carry along from hemisphere to hemisphere, heading the terrible realization that his situation literally spans the world at an unsettling rate.
One of the most pivotal scenes happens between Emily and Audry as they discuss a frog Emily found in a marsh that she tried to keep as a pet. She compares her new domesticated buddy to the fish and sea creatures that Audry and her team study, as the local marine biologists, working steadily to answer the spike in mass animal deaths in such massive quantities. Emily asks her mother why is it fair that we, as humans, get to capture and dissect fish for our own understanding. Audry attempts to break down the morality of studying sea critters under the guise of no harm, no foul, justifying her work and saying that they release most of the animals they acquire. To Audry’s bewilderment, her words resonate and haunt her after a frightening encounter with a local man suffering the same symptoms of headaches, blackouts, hallucinations, etc, as Harry does. And the literal Block Island Sound presents a ghastly blaring low-pitched horn shrouded by an itchy static sound. It disrupts all electronics and when the sound itself doesn’t work, they amplify it and project abrasive hallucinations on their subject.
The ending of the film truly cements a new truth as Emily and Audry’s discussion gets proven by the aliens. After worsening symptoms of erratic behavior around electronics, fighting persistent hallucinations of a dead Tom who pressures him to take a female human, blaring the Block Island sound when he resists, Harry mentally breaks, kidnapping Emily and dragging her out to sea. Audry jumps the boat and struggles with her brother until the Block Island sound bellows for Audry and Emily to clearly hear. Wind churns and everything on the boat flies away being sucked into the sky. Harry zips away into cloudy darkness and Audry clings on until she too, is taken. Emily remains as the sole survivor on the boat, left under the deck, alive, but traumatized.
Audry and Harry’s abduction proved that seeing is believing and poses the question of whether or not humans are justified in their studying and dissecting of almost all life on earth. The clash comes when aliens enter the equation. The film leaves Audry alive in the end, but she now is a subject to alien hosts just as she is a human host to fish and other sea creature subjects. The survival of her abduction and Harry’s undisclosed absence reiterates the fact that in the minds of an alien race, we are their fish, aimlessly wandering in our civilized chaos, plucked in a haphazard moment for observation. Just as Audry rationalized to Emily that they only take a few fish, keep some, and return the others, it’s only fair that humans are fair game to aliens then- right? Harry and Audry’s abduction initially comes off as the aliens posing a significant ‘threat’ to humanity when in actuality, the aliens are equally as inquisitive and intrusive as we are with almost all other living life on our Earth.
Within this turmoil, there’s a lack of willingness to connect the natural with the supernatural. The film almost lays out all of the pieces and as viewers, we might fail to connect the dots without the willingness to imagine a scenario that usurps humans as the top of the food chain And every time humanity discounts other sentient and perceptive beings, we do a complete disservice to ourselves and the potential of a coexistent lifestyle with supernatural beings/civilizations.
Some of the final shots of the film offer a more clear glimpse into how the aliens have been taking some of the sea wildlife and returning some. They appear as a darker glowing mist, and when a fish or collection of sea vegetation is taken it glows green. The story really points to a depressing alternate reality for humans to internalize. And the film, as a whole, perfectly instills fears of existential dread and coming to terms with the reality that humans do not have full control of all creatures. The film recognizes humanity’s moral compass with a general sense of our own place in our subjective order. we place the value of animals and other living life on planet Earth as secondary afterthoughts. Although we never come face to face with the aliens themselves, we are given clue after clue about their ‘intentions’ to observe, learn, and collect data. From Aubry’s daughter Emily, pondering her mother’s career choice as a marine biologist to the local authorities not thoroughly investigating the bizarre phenomena happening to the local wildlife, the film emphasizes humanity’s willingness to believe in only the tangible.
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