Fantasia 2025 Review: TERRESTRIAL, A Black Comedy Thriller From Director Steve Pink

Comedy directing legend Steve Pink (Accepted, Hot Tub Time Machine) takes a swing at a black comedy sci-fi thriller in Terrestrial, starring Jermaine Fowler.

When college friends Maddie (Pauline Chalamet), Ryan (James Morosini), and Vic (Edy Modica) show up to visit their old pal Allen (Fowler), the are stunned to see him living large in a big ass mansion on a hill in Hollywood. They knew Allen as a struggling, wannabe sci-fi writer who hadn't quite found his groove, but this new crib would seem to indicate otherwise. As the quartet start to ease into a casual weekend hang, Edy becomes uneasy with some of Allen quirky - borderline paranoid - behavior, and Ryan, newly engaged to Maddie, starts to see that Allen's lifestyle doesn't seem to add up.

Through all of this, Allen insists that he just finally found the right connections and that things are finally working for him. However, his mask of sanity is beginning to slip and it won't be long until everyone's weekend turns really, really bad. It turns out that Ryan and Edy were right to be concerned, but nothing could've prepared them for the mess they've stepped into, and no matter how hard Allen tries to keep it together, it's only a matter of time before his past mistakes catch up with him.

Written by Connor Diedrich and Samuel Johnson, Terrestrial is a film that thrives on the element of surprise, which makes it virtually impossible to say anything more about the plot. However, to relay that it involves an unpaid debt, a struggling sci-fi icon, a cherry Mustang GT, and an alien invasion (kind of), and a shocking amount of brutal head trauma may give you a sense of the gravity of Allen’s situation.

The film’s nonlinear narrative structure proves crucial to Terrestrial’s emotional arc, helping to provide context and empathy for Allen’s absurd predicament. To give some of the influences discussed in the Q&A following the Fantasia 2025 world premiere would probably be spoilers, but there is a whole lot of Coen Brothers and a little bit of Parasite in the mix, though whether the film reaches either of those high-water marks for black comedy is up for interpretation.

What is less ambivalent is Jermaine Fowler’s (inter)stellar performance as the slowly unraveling Allen Pierce. Over the course of the film, Allen transforms from the confident nouveau riche homesteader to something far less stable. The way in which Pink and Fowler calibrate the character to sharpen the film’s very precise tone to a fine point is impressive, and since every other character in Terrestrial is in the dark with the audience for the first act of the film, the onus for setting that tone falls squarely on Allen’s shoulders, he handles it beautifully.

For a director who is so firmly identified with comedy, Pink is able to make the transition into thriller territory pretty smoothly. This is in large part thanks to key partners like Diedrich and Johnson, whose script knows exactly what to reveal and when, and cinematographer Tom Hernquist, who lenses his first feature here with the confidence of a long-time pro. The cinematic language of a thriller differs greatly from that of a comedy, and between Hernquist, Pink, and editor Neal Wynne, Terrestrial manages to tread the line between genres deftly, leading to an hour and a half of carefully calculated surprises that add up to a very satisfying, even emotionally moving conclusion.

While there are definitely a few spoilery influences that make themselves known perhaps a bit too prominently over the course of the film, the execution here is more than solid and Fowler’s performance is definitely worth the watch. Terrestrial is the rare generous project that invites comedic actors to show their other talents, which is always an exciting thing to witness. Though it doesn’t have the same level of flash or star power as Hot Tub Time Machine – an admittedly high bar from a bygone era of studio comedy – Terrestrial has a lot to say about the loneliness and desperation that accompanies a career in the arts, and the lengths people will go through to convince the world that they are okay. Alternately harrowing, hilarious, shocking, and poignant; Terrestrial is one of the fest’s biggest surprises.