They Live

In the gritty, dystopian world of downtown Los Angeles, a mysterious figure strolls through the streets, shrouded in anonymity. He is known only as Frank Armitage, an unassuming drifter who is driven by a complete detachment from the world around him. Frank is a man without a past, a forgotten relic from a bygone era. But as he navigates the city's underbelly, he is not alone in his quest for anonymity – a sense of isolation and disconnection that shrouds him like a thick, impenetrable fog. As Frank roams the streets, searching for scraps to scavenge or lost causes to take on, he stumbles upon a small, box-like storefront tucked away in a forgotten alley. An isolated pawn shop, known as George's, is his unexpected destination. Frank enters, drawn by a mix of curiosity and indifference. Inside, he encounters a shop owner named George, an out-of-place, Eastern European immigrant with a gentle demeanor and an air of eccentricity about him. George has an aura that makes one feel more at ease than unnerved, and it is this quality that emboldens Frank to reveal more about himself than he ever has before. In the store's cluttered back room, Frank is gifted two pairs of peculiar, alien-looking sunglasses – seemingly picked out as a curiosity by the owner George to assuage their chance encounter. The glasses lie discarded, just another unsold oddity that takes up space in the cramped storage area. Frank is offered a pair, either to wear away or as a keepsake, to which he responds with nonchalance, donning the dark-rimmed shades. The abrupt shift into a dimly lit world beneath the veil of the Los Angeles cityscape creates not just physical disparity but an existential insight that irreparably changes Frank's perception of reality. Wearing the mysterious glasses, Frank reveals that beneath the façade of concrete skyscrapers and concrete pedestrians in L.A., monstrous, obtrusive mass-broadcast advertisements assault the urban environment. Suddenly, it dawns on Frank that a far more sinister reality lies beneath American capitalist democracy. Frank views alien propaganda instead of a high consumerist lifestyle which essentially, manipulates the residents in urban areas to gain control of the North American continent. The advertisements, essentially broadcast to hide their presence and command trust with many residents unwittingly succumb to their control. Frank soon discovers many familiar faces now belong to more alien beings disguidised as his subjugated populace and in control. He finds himself caught between bewildering knowledge and conflicting emotions as these hidden conspirators who occupy the high echelons of L.A., take ruthless possession of even small, ordinary issues even like neighborhood restaurants and market. A dehumanized landscape of domination has effectively undermined this urban landscape and left unwitting residents isolated from meaning. Aware of this massive reality and facing the overwhelming abyss ahead, Frank walks away calmly with a grim, subdued irony, sensing the necessity to bring a necessary revelation to his people so that they can challenge their tyranny as he made his first and honest decision.