Terrestrial (2025) ‘Fantasia’ Movie Review: An inventive albeit slight genre fare about our obsession with sci-fi lore

Steve Pink may not be a household name if you aren’t into raunchy sex comedies like his 2010 film “How Tub Time Machine” and its sequel. However, he is someone who helped me discover my taste in American movies through his work as a writer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity.” With “Terrestrial,” Pink brings some of his early tendencies, including our obsession with the arts, into the mix, while also serving a genre fare that is occasionally engaging. 

Co-written by Connor Diedrich and Samuel Johnson, Pink’s direction is quick to establish the premise, which mostly centers around the protagonist, Allen (Jermaine Fowler), and his obsession with writer SJ Purcell (Brendan Hunt) and the sci-fi world he has created through his books and the subsequent TV show based on them. Allen is now working on his own sci-fi world; his first book is supposedly in the works and he has already cracked a movie deal – although the big-ass mansion that he lives in sure holds some secrets that he has been hiding from us and his three old friends Maddie (Pauline Chalamet), Vic (Edy Modica) and Ryan (James Morosini), who pay him a visit while travelling to L.A..

When his friends arrive, there’s a visible paranoia in his character – we get hints from Maddie’s discussion with her now-fiance Ryan that she wanted to take this trip and meet Allen because his worried mother had called her about his mental health and lack of communication. And something feels truly off when things in the mansion seem out of place and/or too good to be true. 

Now, hidden agendas and the classic bait-and-switch twist aside, there’s a certain inventiveness that Pink’s film carries with it. The script is peppered with black comedy that often retraces the alienation that up-and-coming artists, particularly writers, feel when they are trying to find a place in the industry. It also, in some odd way, takes a swing at pop culture from a lens that feels dangerously involving to a degree where no form of originality would suffice as the audience wants iterations of the same IP till it dies a slow, painful death. 

But, beyond that, “Terrestrial” suffers from being slight. Not everything works, as we don’t get enough time to spend with any of these characters; not enough for us to care for them. The performances are also pretty mid, with Jermaine Fowler failing to imbue Allen with the same sense of anxiety and paranoia that the script demands. What could have worked in the favour of the film was a stronger second act that did not just depend entirely on perspective change, but also amped up the genre conventions in some way. 

The tropes of offering a gateway to Allen’s mind are quite nimble, and since none of the other actors, particularly Chalamet and Morosini, offer anything unhinged or surprising, the turn towards horrific repercussions doesn’t land the way it was intended. Somehow, somewhere, “Terrestrial” should have offered something concrete in its fiction-within-fiction narrative – The Neptune Cycle – feels like a lore that would only cater to 1 in a million alien enthusiasts, so instead it just uses the narrative thread to give a call-back to Pink’s time-travel shenanigans in “Hot Tub Time Machine.”

That said, the film’s score and inventive turns that use the single-location setting to the best of its abilities make this trip into the messed-up mind of a writer well worth the meta-break. 

“Terrestrial” premiered at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival.

Terrrestrial (2025) Movie Links: IMDb, Letterboxd, Fantasia
Terrrestrial (2025) Movie Cast: Jermaine Fowler, James Morosini, Pauline Chalamet, Edy Modica, Rob Yang, Brendan Hunt