They don’t make ‘em like Zach Clark’s The Becomers (2024) anymore. Maybe they never did, at least not all at once like this. The sci-fi is awed and hopeful; the horror is dyspepsia and Videodrome bodies; the comedy is full frontal deadpan; the romance is clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. And all these joyful, fearful elements spin like DNA strands around a spiraling plot that has no intention of going where a movie like this has ever gone before. And yet where this film goes is intensely familiar emotionally. You will see yourself. You will see people you love and people you have lost. Genderless, timeless, truly universal, it’s low budget, lo fi high art telling the story of every one of us through the gory journey of body-swapping aliens on the run.

The main alien we’re following through the movie is nameless, but easy to recognize throughout a string of great performances (Conrad Dean, Isabel Alamin, Molly Plunk, Keith Kelly, Karla Monay Shaw) and huge day-glo green eyes. (At one point they go by Francesca, but I’m pretty sure that’s an alias.) Their backstory is peppered throughout the movie via Russell Mael’s (whoo, Sparks!) purposefully odd, distant narration–basically the same persona he uses for the spoken word part of “My Baby’s Taking Me Home”–but neither names nor specific bodies are necessary to follow their story and care about what happens. The alien has evacuated their dying planet and is alone after crash landing, jumping from body to body to survive, while also desperately searching for their partner–only ever called “lover” in one of the film’s many artful uses of the superficially weird.

I will say superficially weird because that is the great and curious thing about The Becomers, and what I suspect will make it dear to many, assuming it gets in front of enough eyeballs to have the purchase it deserves. The movie has A Lot going on. Body hijacking and pursuit by authorities obviously, but also the parceled out story of a destroyed alien world, the secret desperation of the white affluent Costco set, extremist cults, the politics of discontent as Content, all cast against the unremarked-upon background of the Pandemic. It should be bizarre, outlandish, but none of this is really strange at all. We have lived this, masking up and gonzo politics and disconnected creature comforts on the couch, for years now. There’s nothing shocking about political polarization and extreme violence anymore. And it may be a reflection of the budget as much as a choice, but the extreme ordinariness of our alien friend waiting in parking lots, nervously munching fast food as they try to be inconspicuous and scan for their missing lover is just so prosaic. Big glow eyes and hidden alien faces and parts are hardly a differentiator in these scenes. It is a reaffirmation, too, that we humans tend to do our best thinking about humaning when presented with characters who are not. Mr. Spock, Data, the Doctor–Star Trek: Voyager’s or the “definite article,” you pick. Clark’s aliens are more human than human in all the ways you need for a clear fictional mirror.

And even when The Becomers is showing us dire, consequential, crazy things, writer-director Clark keeps it real, finding the most human common denominator. Authorities have tracked the alien to a shady motel, but then there is the cringe humor of the so, so misguided desk clerk smitten with them. Much later in the film, the alien and their lover get ensnared in the plot of a ridiculous fringe cult, but these scenes are also pretty funny, grounded in the foibles and needs of real people as much as their absurd situation. It’s funny because it’s true, and it’s special because it’s ordinary.

There are rough spots. While I think the lo-fi, retro aesthetic of The Becomers serves the film incredibly well and the practical effects are great, there are two scenes where coy camera work fails to hide the fact that there wasn’t enough cash to do the scene right, and in one scene, I couldn’t even really tell what happened. For that particular scene, I think Clark wanted to make the confusion an asset by creating suspense and uncertainty in the last lap of the movie, letting events gradually become clear, but it frustrated me. And I loved the story unfurled through Russell Mael’s narration, but the pacing of it, relating long distant episodes that brought the alien to earth even as their story is rapidly advancing, felt off at times. It pulled me out of the movie, and as much as I like the idea of the shoulder tap that keeps reminding you of the full scope of events and the distance our alien lovers have come, to have an internal dialogue so far out of sync runs against the grain of how we naturally watch movies. I’m not sure it was the right approach. Although I wouldn’t have wanted to lose the story of what the aliens had come through either.

That story was one of my favorite parts of the movie actually. It wasn’t because the telling was peculiarly poetic or beautiful. They got Russell Mael for a reason, and it wasn’t his lovely falsetto. The strangeness of the word choices–black drink as a kind of alcohol, conjoining for sex, etc–was pitched for silliness, but this made the familiar story stand out even better. I met someone, we fell in love, we lived together, our lives changed. Before the movie even begins, our alien lovers have already lived a story of an ordinary love in extraordinary times, and that might be the most relatable part of all. The Becomers will probably be called a romance by some, but what it is is so much more interesting than what we think of as romance. These are people who fell in love and stayed together, and their love wasn’t all-consuming or monogamous, but it was still the most important thing to them while their world was dying. The continuation of their relationship after they do finally find each other on this strange, distant world isn’t about passion–although you will get weird alien sex, no worries–but commitment and comfort. It’s a mature love, and stories that center commitment like this are so rare. There is no Hallmark movie about staying in love to rival these sweet, murdering body hoppers.

So that’s the thing about The Becomers. Sure, there is murder and body horror and vivid goo, and yet all I can talk about, all I will remember from this movie is the loveliness of true love holding a hopeful future together surrounded by the most desperate circumstances…again. Truly it is a love story for our times, and for all times, all bodies. As genre-less as genderless, The Becomers is for all the lovers out there. If you’re lucky, you will feel seen.

The Becomers opens theatrically Friday, August 23.

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Angela is lucky enough to have found true love herself and heartily recommends it for our troubled times. Love you, Mark. ❤