This intelligent British space opera opens with vast, flat barren spaces, a shimmering alien city that looks like a prog rock album cover on the horizon, and a cast of human-looking aliens whose insect-like ways take a while to fathom. Daniel Brocklebank (Coronation Street) and Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead) have brief, striking cameos as high-ranking members of the Hive, a humanoid extra-terrestrial civilisation where family ties involve telepathic links that can function across interstellar space.
After this prologue, the film takes off across the universe but confines itself mostly to the stark, strange interior of a Hive spacecraft, with only two characters, the allusively named Cane and Eva – played by Rupert Graves (Sherlock) and Ellie Kendrick (Game Of Thrones) – carrying the action. When his Hive partner dies back home, Cane becomes disturbed, but also more human – open to concepts like music, decoration, pictures and presents which are alien to his culture. Eva, still playing the good drone, disapproves, and focuses on the mission … which may not be to the benefit of the Earth’s ‘indigenous population’.
A debut feature from director Daniel Fitzsimmons, who co-wrote with Neil Atkinson, Native stretches its budget by setting the bulk of the film on one unusual, stylised, genuinely alien-seeming set. Because of its challenging, thoughtful approach, it’s a film audiences will have to commit to – literally getting past how alien the characters are before the story can work. Fitzimmons trusts viewers to pick up on tiny moments that suggest what the society of the Hive is like – as when Cane makes a present for Eva and she has no idea how to respond to the new idea of a gift (“I don’t need it”). Graves and Kendrick – usually supporting actors, here holding centre screen – are excellent, but unshowy as they grapple with Earthly feelings.