While watching Luke Sparke’s new film Occupation: Rainfall, you inevitably wonder, why isn’t this a TV show? Set two years after the beginning of a worldwide alien invasion, the film follows a sprawling cast of humans and aliens alike as they strive to save Earth from total destruction. At a base level, the film is really impressive. The CGI is mostly very strong, the production design is detailed and believable and the world feels rich and expansive. However, Sparke ultimately tries to fit what feels like a full season’s worth of plot and character development into the film’s two-hour plus runtime that the film ultimately feels rushed and shallow.
In Sparke’s defense, a large part of the reason he likely didn’t think it was too important to spend a lot of time on character backstory here is because the film is a sequel to 2018’s Occupation. A number of that film’s characters return here. There’s Matt Simmons (Dan Ewing), a hotheaded military man with extreme prejudice toward the aliens. There’s Amelia (Jet Tranter replacing Stephanie Jacobsen), a translator and liaison between humans and the aliens who’s still stinging after a betrayal. There’s even briefly Peter (Temuera Morrison), the leader of a small community struggling to survive peacefully in the Australian bush away from the main conflict.
In theory, we should know these characters already, but even most of the new characters are painted in the same broad strokes and the stakes don’t feel that convincing as a result. Take Gary (Lawrence Makoare), an alien defector whose real name we never learn because Simmons derisively refuses to learn it and nicknames him Gary instead. From the beginning, Simmons and Gary have the kind of classic buddy cop relationship that starts off adversarial and eventually becomes affectionate. However, despite their adventures–including a thrilling hover car chase and a tense giant bug battle–neither Gary or Simmons are really given enough screentime or emotional depth to believably sell that storyline. Instead, the action is so constant that the character development feels pro forma.
Admittedly, some characters and storylines fare better, not just because they’re given more development, but because there’s, frankly, a marked difference in the actors’ skill levels. By far the most compelling character and plotline centers around Wing Commander Hayes (Daniel Gillies), a military leader of dubious morality who is willing to sacrifice civilians and allies alike in order to destroy the aliens. Gillies plays a smarmy villain well, but he also gets one of the film’s few quiet moments when, after waking from a nightmare, Hayes tells a fellow pilot about his time being tortured in alien captivity. The scene is perhaps one of the film’s most well-acted, but it’s also one of the few times Sparke lets us understand a character’s motivations with any depth.
Still, good as Gillies is, the other reason Hayes is so compelling is that he’s the antagonist in Amelia’s storyline. Of the returning characters, she’s the most complex and sympathetic, not just because her motivations are well-conveyed, but because the stakes in that storyline are clear and focused. Indeed, if Occupation: Rainfall were just about the Hayes/Amelia-centric plot, it would be both shorter and more engaging. However, that plot is only one of many and because Sparke is juggling so many characters and plots and trying to set up a sequel, the whole movie ends up feeling like a thin middle installment. Everything is just set up.
There’s a lot to like in Occupation: Rainfall. The world Sparke has created is clearly rich in detail and both the CGI and production design are impressive for a non-Hollywood action picture. However, Sparke ultimately does his material a disservice by not letting it breathe. It’s easy to imagine an episodic version of this story where the Gary/Simmons dynamic has the time and space to grow convincingly and where Ameila and Hayes spend a full season trying to out-maneuver each other only to face off in the season finale. Unfortunately, Occupation: Rainfall feels like the outline of a great sci-fi movie instead.
