You probably ask for a lot more futuristic imagery from your sci-fi than Jonah has in store. But what Ben Van Kleek’s sci-fi thriller lacks in that department due to being a rather low-budget indie, it more than makes up for with its impressively engrossing storytelling. Alaina Huffman’s formidable air makes Margot a fascinating character. And her convoluted darkness poses a far more intriguing question than the possible existence of aliens. With an ending as ambiguous as most things that go wrong in the lives of Ozzie and Jonah, Kleek’s film has a near-brush with turning out pretentious. But thankfully, it never bites off more than it can swallow.
Spoiler Alert
Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
The never-ending bills and a second mortgage on her house must’ve been hard enough on single mother Margot. But things get considerably more difficult for her to handle when her little kid, Jonah, gets allegedly abducted by the aliens and comes back paralyzed from the waist down. Elsewhere, Ozzie and Darren put their myth-busting brains to use while interviewing a healer who claims his methods are far more effective and have far fewer side effects than Western pain drugs. Henrik’s sarcastic yet very valid jab at pain treatments often leading to opioid addiction hits Ozzie somewhere personal. And as we soon see him repeatedly turning to a bottle of pills, it gets increasingly evident why he’d flinch at Henrik’s statement. The two worlds collide when the case of Jonah’s alleged abduction by aliens is brought to Ozzie by their producer, Jen.
Why does Ozzie agree to investigate Jonah’s case?
Having had his fair share of experiences with people screaming aliens to make a quick buck, Ozzie is understandably reluctant to take on Jonah’s case. But this very reasonable reluctance has more depth to it as Ozzie gets sucked into something sinister from his past that comes up in his dream to haunt him. What we know about Ozzie’s far-from-perfect childhood from this dream and what he entrusts Darren with is that he might’ve had a UFO sighting as a child. Instead of being taken seriously, little Ozzie was bullied in his school when he made the mistake of sharing his experience. Termed “Alien Boy,” Ozzie grew up feeling the pangs of loneliness and rejection as he never made any friends in high school. It’s perhaps the pain that the dream brings up that makes him empathize with Jonah’s situation. While not at all convinced by his mother’s claims, Ozzie likely takes on the case to make sure at least the kid is alright.
Why does Ozzie suspect Margot of being an abuser?
Margot’s clearly odd from the moment Ozzie and Darren set foot in the house on the outskirts of the town. It’s either electricity or network, so the two have to make do with a single house phone. Now, it’s only at this point when Ozzie starts asking questions that we get to know about Jonah’s condition. In a tone of morbid sincerity, Jonah only speaks about the end of the world, which will follow the depletion of the oceans and a worldwide famine. Despite Jonah’s strange disposition, which confirms his mother’s claim that the Jonah she got back isn’t her son, Ozzie isn’t too keen on believing Margot just yet. It doesn’t help Margot’s case that she didn’t rely on the doctors, who only wanted to run their tests on Jonah. What she dismisses as the healthcare system’s attempts at handing her a big fat bill is what Ozzie believes Jonah needs—proper diagnoses and treatment. Ozzie’s suspicion of Margot grows manifold the more he recognizes the problematic ways she “cares” for her son. If the self-imposed isolation of herself and her son isn’t bad enough, Margot keeps Jonah locked in his room. Even though Darren is more inclined to give Margot the benefit of the doubt, Ozzie’s wondering if Margot has the entire house bugged. His suspicion is only proven right when Margot lashes out at him for something he said to Darren in secret. It’s rather ironic that this outburst not only proves that she has her eyes and ears all around the house but also Ozzie’s expert opinion of her—that she needs a psych evaluation. The circumstances scream child abuse. And as we see Margot lacing their smoothies with a strange powder, we are only nudged further towards forming a bad opinion of her.
How does Ozzie’s past trauma come up?
So far, nothing they’ve seen can at all justify Margot’s staunch assertion that aliens took her kid and did something to him. Margot believed that showing them the crater near the house that she claims appeared right where the beam of light showed up would convince them. And while the Geiger counter does detect some amount of radiation, the fact that the property is close to a military base makes Ozzie refute the alien theory. The dead chickens in a barrel only make Margot look more cuckoo and do nothing to help her case. But there’s one thing Ozzie can’t explain with his idea that Jonah’s being abused by his mother. Jonah’s been showing up in his dreams—the dreams that bring up the past he’s been trying to leave behind. Ozzie, as a child, was abandoned, tormented by the system, and filled to the gullet with pills. It doesn’t make sense for Jonah to know any of this. Yet the kid, who, ever since his brush with the aliens, has been calling himself a Centauri, is fluent in Ozzie’s past and believes that they both need to go “home.”
Did aliens take Ozzie and Jonah?
What works in favor of the overall ambiguity that Jonah is going for is the fact that the film plays the role of an unbiased observer and puts you in the same seat as well. For the most part, we are not to take Ozzie’s cynicism over the whole thing as something unreasonable or inflexible. But there’s one thing that speaks to his evident hesitation to believe Margot. If the alien theory does turn out to be true, it would mean that what Ozzie saw as a child, the thing that changed the course of his life for the worse, was in fact a UFO. For someone who’d rather explain his misery with the tangible evil that exists in the worst, Ozzie’s tendency to dismiss Margot’s claims is understandable. But Ozzie himself doesn’t always make sense in this pursuit. When their secret mission to uncover the truth about the crater ends up with both Darren and Ozzie falling into it and developing weird lesions on their skin, Ozzie desperately tries to pass them off as hives and even forces Darren to take antihistamines.
It’s likely that Darren understands that continuing the investigation helps no one, and it’s best to pack up and leave. But it’s Darren’s personal experience with the pitfalls of apathy and abandonment that makes his heart break for Jonah. By now, he’s been spot-on about everything he’s found suspicious about Margot. She does, in fact, have CCTV installed all over the house and secretly listens in on everything Darren and Ozzie discuss. And to corroborate the abuse theory even further, Ozzie learns from Jen that Jonah was adopted, something that Margot furiously refutes. It’s after Ozzie saves Jonah’s life from an inexplicable symptom that left him unable to breathe that he decides to take him to the hospital. Darren, at this point, would rather save his own neck and get out of this bizarre situation. But knowing there’s a huge possibility that Margot’s been denying Jonah the treatment he needs, Ozzie would rather get into a scuffle with his friend than leave the kid behind.
Jonah‘s ending does clarify one thing about Margot. While she does show signs of being tremendously erratic, which is proven after she kills Darren and injures Ozzie horribly, she isn’t exactly lying about the aliens. Of course, the theory could be that Margot is a psychotic abuser who hallucinates the whole thing. She did, after all, lose her family legacy and her life’s work when Margot’s Breakfast Diner slipped out of her hand because of a bad deal she’d signed. Maybe in creating this story, Margot intended to bring back the lost attention and glory. But the way I see it, there was a purpose in Ozzie being pulled into Jonah’s case. In the ending sequence, before the UFO shows up, Jonah “heals” an unconscious Ozzie with his energy in the same way that Henrik heals people. Everything that has happened in Ozzie’s life ever since his UFO sighting as a child has been leading him to this—his passage “home.” If Jonah’s claim of being a Centauri is true, given that the UFO in the ending sequence takes both Jonah and Ozzie, chances are that Ozzie is a Centauri too. Jonah was only left behind the first time so that Ozzie could be taken too. And considering Margot seems rather calm when saying goodbye to her child, maybe she was in on the whole plan. She may have known all along that Jonah would be taken again. The first time the aliens showed up in her yard and she walked toward the beam of light, she might’ve been given a part to play in their pursuit of the Centauries—Jonah and Ozzie.
