Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: C
Editing: B-

Little Joe is a modern riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or at least it clearly wants to be. In this case, though, instead of the plants being some sort of alien species, director and co-writer Jessica Hausner offers up another argument for paranoia about genetic engineering. In this script, which is repeatedly on the nose with its themes, more than once we are reminded of the dangers of a modified organism doing whatever it can to propagate itself.

To Hausner’s credit, she creates a visual palate rich with vibrant color, using fairly limited resources: most of the story takes place in either the large, sterile lab where all of these plants are being grown, or in the home of the lead plant breeder (or scientist, or whatever), Alice (Emily Beecham), where she has brought one of the plants as a gift for her teen son, Joe (Kit Connor). She names the plant “Little Joe” after him, and thereafter in this story, not just that single plant, but all of them, are referred to thusly.

Much like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, once a person is affected by the plant—in this case, infected, by inhaling its pollen—their personality becomes permanently, but almost imperceptibly, altered. All they care about is the safety of the plant, at the expense of all else. Hausner clearly wants us to feel as though people’s behavior becomes slightly odd once this happens. The problem here is that, the way Hausner directs every single actor in her film, they don’t act quite natural even before this change occurs, when we are supposed to think of them a “normal.”

Little Joe is one of those small “indie films” (in this case, also a British film) overly concerned with maintaining a quiet, eerie tone, from which it never quite deviates. The delivery of every single line is calm and muted; a raised voice only happens occasionally and for effect. This near-monotone way of speaking is adopted by everyone and is quickly established as the default. And this is what keeps Little Joe from quite working, because the characters rather feel like they have been “body snatched” from the start.

The story is also a gross over-simplification of things like genetic mutation. Sure, movies like this exist to take liberties with facts, but most science fiction at least convolutes things to the point that you feel like the “science” would be too complicated to understand either way. There’s just something off about the plausibility here, like this movie is just a “thinking man’s” version of M. Night Shyamalan’s notoriously bad The Happening.

It has other problems, most of which just amount to pretension. The camera work is occasionally baffling, the camera always sliding to one side at a slow, steady pace, but occasionally in a slow zoom, until the two people speaking to each other on either side of the screen go out of frame and then all you are looking at is the wall behind them. What? And then there’s the music. Bizarrely, I can find no music or score credit for Little Joe, even though the soundtrack is full of strangely erratic percussion, occasionally punctuated by what sounds like a tonal mix of multiple dogs barking.

And yet . . . I must admit, I did find Little Joe compelling. Granted, it also stars Ben Wishaw, one of the most beautiful actors working today. It’s not just him, though, that made Little Joe nice to look at: misguided cinematography notwithstanding, the production design is both stark and memorable, with lots of swaths of solid color and simple patters, all of which is lit impeccably. It’s an odd compliment to give, but the lighting is Little Joe’s greatest asset.

Still, even though I never found it dull or boring, there’s no escaping how Little Joe’s premise is just something dumb disguised as an intellectual exercise. It kind of pains me to give this movie the same rating as I have others that made me much angrier with how stupid they were, but I still have to be fair. In this case, it’s almost insidious, because too many people will be convinced this is something more “academic” in nature when in reality, fundamentally it’s just as stupid.

*You better watch your back around those plants!*

Overall: C+