John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) gained popularity in the COVID-19 years when social media became abuzz with viral memes of seeing something without and then with sunglasses; the message conveyed was of waking up to reality, or looking beyond the obvious; even more accurately, it’s looking through the appearance and seeing the real face. The message wasn’t new in sci-fi cinema as one can put it against Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) but it preceded the red pill awakening of The Matrix (1999) by a decade.

Carpenter’s screenplay for They Live is based on Ray Nelson’s 1963 short story “Eight O'Clock in the Morning” though aside from the protagonist’s name – Nada – and the theme of waking up to reality...

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