Vermont Author's Work Comes to the Screen in the Surreal Dystopian Comedy 'Landscape With Invisible Hand' 

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• Courtesy Of MGM
• Kylie Rogers and Asante Blackk play teens falling in love for an audience of aliens in this surreal comedy based on M.T. Anderson's novel.

One of my favorite novels of the past several years is Landscape With Invisible Hand. East Calais author M.T. Anderson, a past winner of the National Book Award, used this brief, brilliant tale of teens under alien occupation to satirize trickle-down economics, social media and Americans' stubborn belief in their own exceptionalism. Cory Finley, director of the excellent Thoroughbreds and Bad Education, adapted the 2017 book into a film, which is now playing at Merrill's Roxy Cinemas.

The deal

Earth has been invaded by a race of funny-looking aliens called the vuvv. But don't worry! They don't want to enslave us, just to extract our raw materials and reshape our domestic economy into a market for their technologically superior goods. If we learn their language and make nice with them, we might even be able to survive on a planet that has become one giant decaying Rust Belt.

Adam (Asante Blackk) is a teenage artist whose family is doing well under the new dispensation, comparatively speaking — they own a house. Drawn to new girl Chloe (Kylie Rogers), he invites her itinerant family to live in his basement with the permission of his bighearted single mom, Beth (Tiffany Haddish).

To make money, Adam and Chloe live stream their budding courtship to an audience of the vuvv, who reproduce asexually and are enthralled by human mating customs. But Adam feels wrong about performing his first love for the cameras — even when his family's financial survival could depend on it.

Will you like it?

A film can get a long way on a premise as rich as that of Landscape With Invisible Hand. This dystopia asks us to imagine how we would feel about having our own faith in the "invisible hand" of the marketplace turned against us. (Yes, Adam's name evokes "father of capitalism" Adam Smith.) The vuvv confidently view humans as primitives and themselves as beneficent guides bringing us into the fold of civilization. They profess a cloying appreciation for every aspect of our culture, from family and romantic bonds to artistic expression — and proceed to transform that culture into an impoverished husk of itself, a plastic souvenir of Earth.

The film's bleak suburban setting is well realized, full of small comic touches. The vuvv, who live in giant, hovering complexes, decorate their homes with taxidermy and midcentury American styles in efforts to "go native." The design of these aliens strikes a fine balance between ickiness and whimsy; one human character describes them as "gooey coffee tables." Their crablike eye stalks might be cute — if only the voices that emanate from their mechanical translators didn't convey a disturbing lack of empathy.

Anderson's novel is told in a series of vignettes, each revolving around one of the artworks with which Adam chronicles his crumbling world. As Adam's family approaches the brink of ruin, the author expertly blends pathos into his palette of broad satire. We laugh at the absurdity of the characters' can-do entrepreneurial spirit when the intergalactic odds are stacked against them, but we also genuinely want them to triumph over their new economic overlords.

Besides visual cleverness, Finley's adaptation brings strong performances to the table. Ultimately, though, it struggles a little to replicate the book's tonal mix, falling more on the side of sentiment than of satire.

Without Adam's narration as a central thread, the story feels disjointed. The pace gradually bogs down rather than mounting in tandem with the family's Dickensian decline. Finley has replaced much of the novel's snappy, heightened dialogue with more earnest sentiments, and the blend doesn't always gel.

Blackk makes Adam a believably introspective adolescent whose raw feelings contrast nicely with Chloe's more practiced, social media-ready moods. But his moody character feels out of place in the archly constructed landscape of this dystopia, and one wishes he'd been given a few of book Adam's smart-ass rejoinders.

A new subplot builds out Beth's character, capitalizing on Haddish's talent for hilariously incredulous reaction shots. But Beth doesn't get to develop much beyond being feisty and indomitable on Adam's behalf. Adam's younger sister (Brooklynn MacKinzie) mostly moons around being sad, and a scene involving their dad doesn't connect to anything else.

For all these reasons, Landscape With Invisible Hand doesn't have quite as sharp a satirical edge as it needs. Still, its conclusion lands with force, sending an uncompromising message about the conundrum of human imagination under capitalism.

Call Anderson and Finley's vision on the nose if you will. But if anything, the story packs a stronger punch today than it did when the novel was published, as human artists struggle to contend with the superior "efficiency" of generative AI. When every part of our lives is reduced to units of economic productivity, Adam wonders, what do we have left worth living for?

If you like this, try...

Sorry to Bother You (2018; Prime Video, Freevee, rentable): Boots Riley uses surrealism to deliver an anti-capitalist message in this absurdist comedy about a telemarketer trying to climb the corporate ladder. Also check out his new series "I'm a Virgo" (seven episodes, 2023; Prime Video).

Spontaneous (2020; rentable): Anderson isn't the only Vermont author whose satirical YA novel has been turned into a movie. This underrated dark comedy is based on Aaron Starmer's novel about teens spontaneously combusting.

"Black Mirror" (six seasons, 2011 to present; Netflix): The monetization of human experience via social media, satirized in Landscape With Invisible Hand, is also a recurrent target of the British sci-fi anthology series about online culture.