Joe Clement and Frann Michel turn to this film because of its obviously critical message about late capitalism, and the way some of its complaints, seemingly new and unprescedented at the time, resonate with the Occupy Wall Street movement today. But they have mixed feelings about how far John Carpenter's portrayal of society hijacked by otherwise unseen aliens through psychological manipulation can go as a social analysis of the real actors and sources of inequality, injustice, and social and environmental destruction.