They Live

Los Angeles, 1980s. Solitary John Nada arrives from Denver in search of work. He only finds precarious employment on a construction site where a worker, Frank Armitage, directs him to a homeless encampment managed by the Justiceville association. John settles there. One evening, the camp's television broadcasts a program interrupted by a speech warning about a global conspiracy. Nada then notices nocturnal activities around the nearby church. There he discovers a suspicious laboratory, but a police raid interrupts his investigation: the members of Justiceville flee and the camp is brutally razed. John returns to the church where he finds stocks of pairs of black sunglasses. They allow whoever wears them to distinguish a hidden side of reality: while the media broadcasts subliminal calls for submission, monstrous aliens blend into the population, occupying positions of power.