REVIEW #128 Invasion (season 1)

Invasion is an Apple TV exclusive series and follows a number of individuals from around the globe as they deal with an alien invasion. From an American soldier in Afghanistan to a Japanese space technician, can they help fight back? 

CAST & THE ACTING 

The majority of the cast was relatively unknown to me, the only actor I recognised and was actually really excited to see was Sam Niell who plays a sheriff in the series. Unfortunately he only had a tiny role in the first episode and he was never to be seen again. However despite Invasion lacking big names this certainly didn’t mean that the acting was sub par, I think everyone done a really good job, delivering solid performances that convincingly sold the storyline. It was good to see a wide range of nationalities from Japanese actors to British actors and they even ensured that it covered the alien invasion from the perspective of different age groups too. Billy Barratt played Casper in the series, a young school boy who has an important role in fighting the aliens. I think he done really well, for a young actor he really stirred up a lot of emotions for me and that got me invested in his character and his journey. But as I said everyone performs well and they all had to display emotions derived not only from the invasion but the issues they had prior to it too. So this was definitely a strong category for Invasion.

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

I always love a good alien invasion storyline, that apocalyptic style I find really exciting and despite there being a slow build up to finally seeing the aliens I think they did handle the topic well. They do spend a few episodes setting the foundations for their characters, exploring them well enough for the audience to understand them fully, which worked well. Then when we finally hit the point where the world now knows that it’s aliens we see how those characters react and survive. My biggest issue with Invasion is that it almost seems like an exact copy of the recent War of the Worlds series, with the aliens having a strange mind link to some humans and then seeing the invasion from different perspectives around the world. I don’t get why we are seeing a big push to have the aliens be linked to a select few humans, it’s just doesn’t make sense to me and it’s never really been explained too well either. However I believe the Apple TV series does handle character exploration and development a lot better, there are a lot of characters to deal with but they all had a lot of time dedicated to them. Perhaps at times this effected the pacing because the first few episodes are a little slow but once it gets into it the excitement builds up. The ending was pretty anticlimactic though, the first wave was defeated pretty easily in the end and the reason why wasn’t explained well so hopefully we will get more answers in season 2.

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

I think the cinematography was quite impressive, they had a lot of locations to film from to show different areas of the world and this wide variety of environments created a lot of contrasting scenes that looked good on screen. From sandy Afghanistan to the gritty streets of London. There was also a strong colour pallet used, it almost seemed like it was getting more grey scale as time went on which was probably more reflective of humans losing hope, the energy being drained from the world. So that symbolic colouring worked nicely. The special effects were mainly used solely for the aliens themselves and then the alien ships too. I would say 90% of the scenes where we got to see the aliens, were set in the dark which would help the design look more realistic and scarier too. In terms of the alien spaceships I think the couple of scenes where we got to see them looked fantastic, the one that was crashed in the Amazon rainforest looked so cool and then finally the end scene which looked good too. For a debut season Apple must have assigned a pretty good budget dedicated the the cinematography and effects.

OVERALL (6.8/10)

Invasion actually was a good watch, the acting was great and there was clearly a decent budget dedicated to the cinematography and special effects. The reason for my pretty low score here is solely down to the plot being so similar to the War of the Worlds series. I hate the aliens being linked to the minds of some humans, it’s something I will never enjoy and I wish the people making these series would just stick to the traditional alien invasion style instead of pushing this mental warfare aspect. I wouldn’t mind it if it was explained well but it just ends up leaving the audience with more questions that simply don’t get answered. Invasion is still exciting, it’s still gripping and has you on the edge of your seat at times but there are certainly a few aspects of the plot I would change. The ending is a little anticlimactic, again it’s not really explained well. The final scene does set up a season 2 so hopefully we will get answers at that point. 

Thanks for reading.

Callan