To save her sister, Abby (Ella Balinska), a British geologist, works in the Georgian Caucasus, a remote region near a Russian occupied zone. When she tries to return home, her helicopter crashes. Instead of taking the most direct route to civilization, she goes through the occupied zone in South Ossetia to rescue a stranger, Lieutenant Colonel John Fisher (Rob Delaney), who seems to have a mysterious agenda. Will she ever focus on the dire nature of her circumstances or keep looking for ways to delay the inevitable? “The Occupant” (2025) is a film that expands on the nine-minute short, “The Occupant: Prologue” (2019) and is an unofficial sequel though you do not need to see the short to understand this feature.
Balinska as the defiant geologist is easy to root for despite her stubborn and baffling choices. “The Occupant” will lose many moviegoers when Abby decides to rescue someone instead of hustling home to be with her dying sister. Balinska must carry the movie since she is the only one onscreen for most of the film except at the bookends of the film or flashbacks. It is ultimately a survival movie as she battles the elements and navigates the rugged terrain to reach her goal. Balinska is convincing as someone who is forcing herself to rise to the daunting challenges of her self-appointed mission and the numerous obstacles that she overcomes. As much as I adore a badass heroine, there are scenes which strained suspension of disbelief soon after the one-hour mark, but the overall plot may have explained it away properly.
Delaney has a reassuring, friendly voice, which makes it easy to believe that Abby would instinctually find it easy to confide in the stranger over the walkie talkie. Timing is everything, and it is easy to believe John, an American Air Force pilot, over any theoretical Russian military presence, but still, it takes a huge suspension of disbelief that she would go out of her way on rougher terrain to fix John’s antenna than choose a less daunting path to return to civilization. John’s predicament and story arc is predictable if you watch a lot of movies. If you do find it predictable, the movie is going to be a slog for you. Everyone else will have their minds blown.
“The Occupant” gave Beth (Vanessa Ifediora) the “wife giggling under a white sheet on a sunny day or hand touching the tops of wheat in a field” treatment. She only exists in relation to Abby and does not feel like a whole person. If the first act had expanded her role, maybe the film would not feel like one big act with a sliver of a conclusion. Every movie needs at least three acts, and the plot’s hills and valleys are smoother than the landscape that Abby must traverse to reach safety. Archie (Stuart Graham) as their loving father is similarly two dimensional, but another warm and wholesome presence that contrasts with her present circumstances. Sergi (Konstantine Roinishvili), her driver and coworker, also does not get enough time with Abby to establish their personal dynamic. Initially he seems like the colleague who does not carry his weight, but he plays a more crucial role in Abby’s life. The film does not do enough to establish their connection.
Director and cowriter Hugo Keijzer, who served in same capacity in the 2019 short, captures the majestic, daunting beauty of the wintry wilderness and black mountains beautifully. Only the tall forest of green trees offer any color in the present timeline. This view contrasts with the flashbacks of life in a stone English cottage filled with flowers and the joys of sororal life. To truly appreciate “The Occupant,” it would be better to see it on a big screen otherwise it could be easy to get distracted and find the film rather monotonous. The landscape functions as visual metaphors for Abby’s emotional and mental state. The monochromatic landscape reflects Abby’s grim focus and faulty binary reasoning with death as bad and to be kept at bay whereas the past is filled with emotion, community and love.
“The Occupant” has a sci-fi component. Abby discovers a black jagged rock with a thumbprint on one of the smoother ridges. It seems to have a strange effect on inanimate objects and seems to be linked to Abby’s emotional state. Abby figures out that she can manipulate it to fill the equipment gaps in her backpack. A mysterious murmuration appears on the horizon even though no starlings should appear on that altitude or in that region. Unlike the short, which lands definitely on the nature of this rock’s existence, the feature makes its identity more ambiguous whether it is a native terrestrial object whose nature is not understood or something not of this world. The ambiguity is fine, but it could leave the audience dissatisfied and wanting real answers, but this movie is primarily a drama that uses sci-fi tropes as opposed to a sci-fi movie so it is not a deal breaker. It does offer the false impression that the writers, cowriter Philip Michael Howe, who cowrote the short with the director, Keijzer, and Roelof Jan Minneboo, did not devote as much thought to it though the blink and miss it shots in the cave reveal otherwise.
The sci fi serves a metaphorical component. Even though Balinska is a strong actor, the plot is too slight to make a complete movie out of a concept, which is Abby’s refusal to accept reality and nature, including death, and living in denial, which may seem more promising, but is ultimately isolating and barren. The opening scene screams, “Message” as Abby holds a book called “Ethics in Geosciences” when only minutes later she is looking for uranium in a foreign country near a war zone. The rocks on the cottage’s windowsill also serve as signifiers of her interest in geology. She likes big rocks! The ethics of her profession contrast with her protest over Beth cutting flowers when they are dying. Their differing attitude on the cycle of life, acceptance and resistance, is what holds “The Occupant” afloat, but it is a thin scaffold regardless of how relatable or poignant it may be.
The deliberate pacing of “The Occupant” makes it challenging to stay focused until the end. It also feels like a movie with several endings. Some movies should remain shorts, especially if the other characters are not going to feel as real and three-dimensional as the protagonist. While the visuals are impressive, and it is well acted, the story needed more work.
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The logistics of rocks possessing people is too slap dash because they do not have a personality. John’s psychological profile is an insufficient substitute. The rocks need to feel separate and independent of him, but they never make an appearance. Their proposal needed to seem appealing. While it serves the moral of the story to make them feel insubstantial compared to reality or memory, the offer’s lack of resonance makes Abby’s decision seem like a foregone conclusion. The “Damn, Archie really could lose his family” sword of Damocles could have been the tension that kept viewers on the edge of their seat if the family was not so hastily sketched.
