Crew
Director – Hugo Keijzer, Screenplay – Philip M. Howe, Hugo Keijzer, Roelof-Jan Minneboo & Xiao Tang, Story – Philip M. Howe, Producers – Kwesi Dickson, Isabel Freer, Jay Taylor & Raymond Van Der Kaaij, Photography – Robbie Van Brussel, Music – Renger Koning, Visual Effects – Lads VFX (Supervisors – Luuk Meijer Nvx & David Van Heeswuk Nvx), Special Effects Supervisor – Ioseb Gvasalia, Makeup Effects – Lela Davitashvili, Production Design – Theo Boswell. Production Company – Revolver Amsterdam/Electric Shadow Company/20 Steps Productions/Studio Artizm/Altitude Film Entertainment/Obscura/UK Global Screen Fund.
Cast
Ella Balinska (Abby Brennan), Rob Delaney (John Fisher), Konstantine Roinishvili (Sergi), Vanessa Ifediora (Beth Brennan), Stuart Graham (Archie Brennan)
Plot
Abby Brennan is forced to leave behind her dying sister Beth and takes a job on a geo-engineering project in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. There she finds a very unusual black rock and takes it with her. As Beth worsens, Abby decides that she must return to England to be with her. However, as she takes a helicopter out, it is struck by a strange swarm and crashes. Abby is the only survivor. As she treks across the landscape and tries to make her way to where she can be found, she strikes up a radio conversation with John, another crash survivor nearby. After encountering a Russian who has a similar radio contact, it becomes apparent that John is something else.
The Occupant was a feature length directorial debut for Dutch director Hugo Keijzer who had worked in commercials before. It is an expansion of Keijzer’s earlier nine-minute short film The Occupant: Prologue (2019), which can be found here at Vimeo. The film received pan-European funding and was shot in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.
A good part – more than three-quarters of The Occupant is a one-person film (as long as one can discount a voice on the other end of a radio and count only the people on the screen). Much of the film is a wilderness survival adventure. This involves Ella Balinska trekking through the Georgian wilderness, which includes beautifully, panoramically photographed vertical rock faces, shale covered mountainsides, snow and blizzard conditions, and disused mining towns. Not to mention a terrifying journey across a frozen river where her travelling companion just casually vanishes under the ice behind her.
There is quite a twist when Ella Balinska encounters the Russian (Konstantine Roinishvili) and [PLOT SPOILERS] they realise that they are both talking to a figure on their radio who is saying possibly misleading things to them. This comes as a great jolt twist. However, where The Occupant proceeds from there is its least satisfying aspect.
[MORE PLOT SPOILERS] Here it becomes apparent that Ella Balinska has been lured to the occupant’s cave so that it can take over her body. However, exactly what is going on and how much of what she has experienced has been ‘arranged’ by the occupant is not clear. We never see the occupant and what its nature is is never made clear. I assumed some kind of alien but even that is not specified. The film ends with Ella refusing the alien’s desire to meld with her and returning home to her ailing sister. Things are made more clear in the original short film The Occupant: Prologue, which deals with a Russian program to lure alien craft using nuclear probes, only for the occupant to play tricks using radio voices to make the drone operator thinks she is receiving orders to attack her own base.
Trailer here