Terrestrial

Allen Perkins (Jermaine Fowler), a broke and unpublished science fiction writer who was recently living out of his car and working at a roadside diner, appears to have had a dramatic reversal of fortune. He now seems to be living in a lavish Hollywood Hills mansion complete with a vintage Mustang and a room obsessively dedicated to 'The Neptune Cycle,' the beloved sci-fi novel series by Allen's literary idol, S.J. Purcell. Concerned by Allen's erratic behavior, his mother reaches out to three of his old college friends — free-spirited Vic (Edy Modica), and engaged couple Ryan (James Morosini) and Maddie (Pauline Chalamet) — who travel to Los Angeles for a reunion weekend to check on him. The friends quickly notice that Allen's story doesn't add up: he's squatting in Purcell's vacant mansion, borrowing Purcell's car, and falsely claiming Purcell's literary works as his own. A tarp-covered guesthouse and Allen's refusal to answer phone calls deepen their suspicion. Maddie's engagement announcement to Ryan agitates Allen further, and his behavior oscillates between generosity and volatile defensiveness as buried resentments and unfulfilled ambitions surface. As the weekend deteriorates, Allen's obsession with Purcell and 'The Neptune Cycle' bleeds into paranoia about his own sense of reality. The narrative escalates through sci-fi and horror registers — including scenes involving aliens and low-fi special effects — before culminating in an unexpected burst of violence, including a climactic single-take shootout. The ending gestures toward a 'literal descent into Hell' and leaves multiple questions deliberately unresolved, reflecting the film's unclassifiable genre-mashup identity.

Sources: Wikipedia, Nightmare on Film Street review, In Session Film review, Dennis Schwartz review