The Visit: An Alien Encounter

The title promises a cheesy exploitation romp, but the only fun you’ll have with this Danish mock-doc will be giggling at how painfully pompous it is. Director Michael Madsen (not the Tarantino favourite but the Danish documentary maker) asks a fascinating question – what would the world’s response be if aliens landed tomorrow? – and renders it sterile, dull and inadvertently comical.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for his impressive cast of scientists, thinkers, civil servants and UN employees, who address the camera directly as though speaking to an alien being – ‘Where do you come from?’, ‘How did you get here?’, ‘Do you understand good and evil?’ – clearly unaware that their straight-faced seriousness is going to seem very silly. These ‘interviews’ are intercut with vacuous, style-over-substance slo-mo footage of children playing, people working and trees waving in the wind – whether to mimic an alien viewpoint of Earth or just to fill the seconds, it’s not clear. The result feels like a Calvin Klein advert directed by a lobotomised Professor Brian Cox.