Been meaning to watch this one for a minute.
So They Live is one of John Carpenter's more well-known films. I'd known about it for maybe six years now, but I'd only gotten around to watching the thing recently. I knew the famous sequence where Roddy Piper's character put on sunglasses and was able to see all the secret subliminal messaging in mass media, but that's about it.
I feel like this film hits both harder and softer in 2026. The message of the film (the idea that the highest class of people wants to keep us in the middle-and-lower classes sleeping and submissive) rings all the more true in this day and age. Every day, despite the fact that we have access to all history and the sum of human knowledge in our pockets at all times, we the people still choose to live a life of distraction and subservience. Alternatively, I feel like maybe 50% of us have known this and felt like this for at least a decade at this point. It almost felt like the film was just repeating what I knew and believed back at me. That's probably just because the film is from the late 80s and it was new then, so I won't hold it against the film itself.
I will say, though, the film goes harder than I thought it would. The start features a police raid against a church and the razing of a homeless shelter while the police brutalize a blind preacher, and I was just thinking, "Damn, they're not hiding ANYTHING in this film". It really shows how the powers-that-be have not only the influence to keep us all complacent, but the power to hammer down those that stick out.
It also shows how, once you realize how bad everything has gotten, there's not much you can do about it. Piper's character sees through all the subliminal messaging of the world around him and goes on a killing spree, trying to kill as many of the alien interlopers as he can while trying to spare the people. He tries recruit people to help him with his cause, but ends up scaring them away with his forwardness and inability to communicate. He tries to get his coworker Frank to see the truth as well, but because of how much Frank has on the line (Wife, Kids, and a Job), he ends up fighting Piper in a 5-and-a-half minute extended sequence. This illustrates how, when one's livelihood is at stake, they'd be willing to fight to maintain a sense of ignorance rather than see the truth because of how much it could hurt.
I will say, though, as soon as that five-minute-fight ends, the film takes a very different tone. It becomes closer to a typical action-flick as our leads try to undermine and undo the alien's influence on the people. There's a lot of action, fights, gunfire, and a race-to-the-finish as they try to disable the satellite dish that's keeping everybody subdued. I am... conflicted about it. On one hand, it's obviously a very fun action sequence (I like the detail that there are some rooms where they just don't open fire, heavily implying that he can tell they're normal people without having to activate the "Truth" filter); on the other, it very much feels like wish-fulfillment in a way. Like, "You saw how everything sucks, now imagine if you could do something about it" style wish-fulfillment. I'm not gonna bash on it because that's a hopeful message to send out, but it did distract me a bit near the end of the film.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this movie. I understand that everybody will watch this movie and think it agrees with their preconceived notions, and then bitch about their opposite political party on Twitter despite the fact that they're both victims to the upper class; but I genuinely think more people should watch films like this in case they aren't skeptical of mass media.
I give it a solid 9/10. Kinda feels like required watching in a way.