In 2017, Russian director Fyodor Bondarchuk surprised global audiences with Attraction ( Prityazhenie ), a gritty, grounded sci-fi film that reimagined an alien invasion not as a global apocalypse, but as a localized disaster in a Moscow housing project. Three years later, Bondarchuk returned with a sequel that shattered that intimate scale. Attraction 2: Invasion ( Vtorzhenie —literally "The Invasion") is a sprawling, operatic, and visually colossal blockbuster that trades the original’s social realism for cosmic mythology and high-stakes spectacle.

★★★☆☆ (3.5/5) – Flawed, fascinating, and ferociously Russian.

District 9 , Ender’s Game , or the more melodramatic arcs of Cloud Atlas .

Released on January 1, 2020 (a prime holiday slot in Russia), the film sought to answer a single, explosive question: What happens to Earth after the aliens don’t leave? To understand Invasion , one must recall the end of Attraction . The first film concluded with a fragile truce: the alien Healer (named Khekon) helped save the life of a human girl, Yulia Lebedeva, after she was fatally wounded during anti-alien riots. In return, the alien ship departed Earth, leaving behind its mysterious "dark matter" core and a now-altered Yulia, who was resurrected with traces of alien nanotechnology in her blood.

A third film, Attraction 3: The Awakening (working title), has been discussed, though production was delayed due to the geopolitical climate and Bondarchuk’s other commitments. The post-credits scene of Invasion teases a chilling future: the Collectors were merely the first wave, and a "hive mind" of galactic proportions has now marked Earth for extermination. Attraction 2: Invasion is not a subtle film. It is loud, messy, overlong, and occasionally saccharine. But it is also ambitious, visually stunning, and unafraid to take emotional risks that Hollywood blockbusters often sidestep. For fans of international sci-fi, it offers a fascinating alternative to the Marvel formula—a world where aliens are not invaders or saviors, but refugees, and where the biggest threat to humanity is not a laser cannon, but its own inability to forgive.