If the Sundance Film Festival is any indication, satirical takes on science fiction and influencer culture will be big in 2023. Festival audiences have been clamoring to see stories about a future where babies are grown in pods and hedonistic influencers looking to increase their following by any means necessary. It would only make sense that, at some point, the two niches would collide.
Landscape with Invisible Hand, which premiered at the festival this week, is what happens when those two things crash at such a fast pace, the best parts of both are lost in the wreckage. The film takes place in the near future, where the world has been taken over by an alien species called the Vuvv. The Vuvv has brought life-saving technology to Earth, overhauling its economic prosperity and rendering most occupations obsolete. With most humans out of terrestrial jobs, people have been forced to find new ways to make money in a Vuvv-ruled world.
Enter Adam (Asante Blackk) and Chloe (Kylie Rogers), two teenagers who go to the same high school, which has had its entire curriculum change to coincide with humanity’s assimilation with the Vuvv. Chloe, a new student, has arrived after she was priced out of her home by the aliens; they wanted to park a floating ship of condominiums above it, annihilating its value. Sensing a spark between them, Adam invites Chloe and her family to live with him, much to the chagrin of his mother (Tiffany Haddish).
