Joseph Sackett | Dominant Species / 2019

freak invasion

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joseph Sackett (screenwriter and director) Dominant Species / 2019 [19 minutes]

 

Even in a science fiction film with similarities to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the alien invaders sometimes make genetic and psychological “mistakes,” the term for many generations that some scientists chose to use in describing the same-sex behavior of animals in nature.

     Into a room of passed out males in human form, the voice of “Father” (Denny Dale Bess) invites his sperm-shaped children to make their selection. And so begins a long series of indoctrinations and class-room lessons in helping these new figures develop into versions of the human male gender.

      They are told to enter the body, hack the system, and most of all to “dominate.” In a series of pairings 1 versus 2, 3 versus 4, 5 versus 6, etc. until the nine soon-to-be “men” establish “dominance.” What begins as mild pushing and slapping confrontations soon moves into more and more violent gestures until 4 men win out over the others, Father congratulating the survivors.

      They quickly learn about the parts of their body, the heart “beats,” the lungs “breath,” the penis engorges with blood at the sight of beautiful woman.

       They do group calisthenics to help develop their muscles. Seated at a table which might remind one of Christ’s Last Supper, these individual’s “first supper” confuses them until they are told to “put it in your mouth.”

 

    At another moment, one of the aliens holding a cutting knife explores its purpose by cutting into his own hand, blood leaking from the wound. Observing the man taste his own blood, nearby friends, observing the action also take a lick of the blood trickling from his hand.

       As they are told to strip off their clothes before going to bed, only one of their group is intrigued by the others’ bodies, the rest of the men acting in near oblivion one each other.

       A slide show demonstrates the differences between men and women. They are shown different facial expressions, smiling when the TV figures smiles, looking confused when the on-screen figure wrinkles his or her brow, looking away horrified when the pictures show humans suffering terrible events. They are asked to parse grammatical statements in past, present, and future tenses.

       In another humorous scene they learn to feel the music and gradually move into dance. Soon this group of beautiful men are all dancing together. Indeed, despite what they are leaning, how to become properly gendered males, there is throughout the film a great deal of oblivious homoerotic behavior since none of the aliens have yet to meet an actual woman.

       As they lay on the beds, their heads turn toward each other as they hear an alien song about their Mother, presumably their early home and the source of their birth, reiterating their major purpose, to spread alien seed.

     To an alien-like sound of “ohhhs and awwws,” they are shown again and again images of various women. The same young previously intrigued by his companion’s bodies, is fascinated by the red lipstick of many of the women’s lips and takes up the knife to make a cut into his own hand, using his own blood to cover his lips. The men train and study in the language of first heterosexual dates, the typical responses expected of the male species.

 

      And finally, a rather dour and not terribly attractive real female is brought into the room and immediately paid, upon her demand, for her participation. The man who hands her the envelope comments, quite truthfully in this case, that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

       Much like a speed-dating meet-up, each of them must meet with her face to face to ask a question, “Where are you from?” “What’s your favorite movie?” etc. No. 7 asks a rather odd but fascinating question, “Did you hurt yourself when you fell out of the sky because you are an angel?” Our confused female doesn’t quite know how to respond to any of their quick questions.

       No. 10 (Justin Cihi) asks a more normative question: “Do you have brothers?” “No, I have a sister,” she responds, to which the man who does quite behave the others, asks “What’s his name,” a common gender issue among many foreign speakers of English, but here may also signify his focus on the male species.

     She is just as suddenly sent on her way. But 10 is congratulated for doing an excellent job flirting with the woman. Asked what he felt about her, he provides the answer he has been taught to regurgitate, proving that he may be the smartest on of the crunch: “I wanted to fuck her and fill her with my sperm.”

       But in the night 10 gets up and attempts to push open the door as he has seen the woman do it the day before. He is asked by “Father” where he is going, as the men all rise to confront him in a menacing frontal mass, grabbing him, and apparently strangling him to death as the sinister sperm rises out of his body, apologizing to Mother that he was the wrong kind of man. Even aliens, apparently, are taught to become homophobes. The sperm reenters the body of a sleeping woman.

 

Los Angeles, December 16, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2023).