In the crowded landscape of alien invasion stories, we are used to certain signposts: crumbling landmarks, desperate military standoffs, and the stark binary of resistance or extinction. Director Cory Finley ( Thoroughbreds ) offers none of these in his devastatingly quiet adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand . Instead, Finley presents an invasion that is less a war and more a hostile corporate takeover—a slow, bureaucratic strangulation of the American Dream.
Desperate for money, Adam and Chloe stumble upon a bizarre market niche. The Vuvv are obsessed with "primitive" human courtship. They cannot comprehend romance, love, or the messy, irrational nature of teenage dating. So, Adam and Chloe decide to broadcast their fake relationship on the Vuvv version of a streaming service. They perform candlelit dinners and awkward hand-holding for an intergalactic audience that pays, in credits, to watch "authentic" human mating rituals. Landscape with Invisible Hand
Set in an unspecified near-future, the film introduces us to the "Vuvv," a species of floating, crablike aliens with a profound aesthetic appreciation for 1950s Americana. They did not arrive with planet-destroying lasers; they arrived with advanced medicine and anti-gravity technology, rendering Earth’s economy instantly obsolete. Within a few years, human currency is worthless. Jobs have vanished. The middle class has evaporated, leaving families to squat in their own foreclosed homes. In the crowded landscape of alien invasion stories,
