Toronto Review: Riz Ahmed In ‘Encounter’
Encounter is more of a promising indication of things to come from rising star Riz Ahmed and British director Michael Pearce than a satisfying work in its own right. A not-entirely-felicitous combination of family melodrama and sci-fi bug invasion, the roots of this Amazon feature stretch straight back to the paranoia-saturated fantastical thrillers of the 1950s, albeit with more realistic effects, violence and profanity. If only the filmmakers had kept the running time down to the 94 minutes of one of its principal progenitors, the 1954 sci-fi drive-in classic Them! — in which the enemy consisted of nuclear-enlarged ants — they might have had a real winner.