Fantasia Fest 2025: Terrestrial Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Known for comedies such as Hot Tub Time Machine and Accepted, director Steve Pink refreshingly tackles a genre-bending science fiction thriller embedded with hints of dark comedy. Terrestrial (or Chimera) offers up an interesting change of pace, compared to his previous works in comedy, resulting in a more grounded and personal story. The film follows Allen (Fowler), a science fiction author who invites old friends to his newly acquired mansion, on the brink of his book and movie deal. Throughout their stay, his friends realize that something is off about Allen, as his abnormal behavior hints at uncanny circumstances at play.

Pink wittingly finds a steady balance between the evident A- and B- stories in the film. The A-story highlights the perspective of Allen’s friends Maddie (Chalamet), Ryan (Morosini), and Vic (Edy Modica), who show audiences Allen’s otherworldly behavior, insinuating an extra-terrestrial threat looming behind the mystery that Allen plays off as awkward and playful joking. The B-story, concurrently, provides context to Allen’s capriciousness in his sleazy “success” to author fame, elevating this elusive sci-fi vibe to thriller status. Spliced in between these opposing perspectives are old clips of a fictional sci-fi show, including previous Hot Tub Time Machine collaborators Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson, to provide comedic relief and parallel the character moments occurring throughout the film.

Terrestrial effectively creates this subtle contrast of science-fiction between the elusiveness of the A-story and Allen’s ambition in the B-story. Even though it takes some time to establish context for Allen’s story to catch up to his gathering of friends, the constant switch in perspectives in the latter half results in an engrossing cover-up story where Allen goes to great lengths to not break his illusion of control. Pink, along with co-writers Connor Diedrick and Samuel Johnson, blend the sci-fi, thriller, and dark comedy genres together in highlighting Allen’s search for purpose and his sense of not belonging to this world, but maybe a world beyond.

In the end, Terrestrial marks a refreshing turn for notable comedy director Steve Pink’s career, blending different genres to tell a multi-perspective story of a struggling author finding purpose.

still courtesy of Hurley/Pickle Productions

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Costa Christoulas

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