Cocoon

Cocoon begins with someone, whom the viewer does not see, coming from the heavens to earth. This entity appears over an ocean, and dolphins are excited to greet this entity, as if they are greeting their creator. Then the movie turns to the state of man, a retirement community. We are all headed that way - decrepit, old, tired, not as attractive physically, waiting to die. We come to know 4 couples who are friends at this community. Three of the men go surrepticiously to a swimming pool of a neighboring empty house, while one claims that by climbing the fence, they are "committing a crime," and he won't be able to "sue if he falls." He later won't let his own wife go to the pool. "Nature dealt us her hand of card, and now at the end of your life, you're looking to reshuffle the deck." These three encounter in the pool what the entity has come for - cocoons. We learn at the end of the movie that the entity is a spacecraft, and the beings who rented the house for a month are some advanced, spiritual being who merely wear human flesh suits to conceal their identity and purpose.

Upon swimming with the cocoons, the three men become young again; they have found the fountain of youth. They are energized, and they get to know the beings who ultimately allow them to use the pool. The grace of the beings is shown in their choice of a struggling, practically bankrupt charter boat owner. They choose him to take them out to sea, where they dive to retrieve the cocoons and take them back to the pool. The boat owner also gets to know these beings. In fact, we learn more about their true spiritual nature through his eyes. They have the power to send their spirit into a human being and create a glow, a state of being of such pure pleasure that the boat owner essentially says it's better than sex. He says something very revealing: "If this if foreplay, then I'm a dead man." Yes, dead without Christ and His Spirit. However, at first, he's terrified by these beings and their power, just as mankind has been terrified by God's power throughout time. Why else would angels have to say, "Fear not," every time they encounter man? When Walter speaks to Ben and they agree to let them use the pool,

Up to that point, we are excited to see the elderly men getting empowered. It reminds us of the power of Christ to raise the dead, to give new life to the dying, to heal the sick - something we all want. Yet, the movie takes a turn and demonstrates that sin is still alive and well and able to ruin this paradise. When one of the four harms his marriage by misusing his newfound youth, the others at the retirement community discover the secret, which the head space being Walter had told the three men not to allow. They run like a mob for the pool where they think they'll obtain their lost youth. Instead, they foul the water so badly that they cause the space beings in the cocoons to risk death. The mass of sinful humanity takes away so much that it ruins things for them and for those from whom they take. One of

Yet Walter realizes that he is learning something brand new for the first time as he holds a space being as it dies - the sorrow of death. He weeps for the first time in his several millenia of existence. Being such a wise space being, he recognizes the importance of this lesson and decides to bring the three men, their wives, and anyone else from the retirement community to their home in heaven to learn their ways, while the space beings learn from the humans.

Like Jesus Christ, who had never experienced death and never would again, these space beings encounter earth life. But unlike Jesus, they had no idea what they would encounter; He who created all things, knew, but came anyway - for us.

At one point, the movie gives an amazing nod to the salvation of God in Christ alone, or at least, the futility of salvation by law. The one friend who wouldn't use the pool (it was stealing) and who refused the unnatural rejuvenating power of the pool (it's not natural) loses his wife who had been senile for some time. He changes his mind when she dies and takes her to the pool, where in one of the most touching parts of the movie, he puts her in the pool and begins to bathe her, hoping to bring her back. Walter walks in and tells him, "It's too late." He tells Walter, "I'll give you everything I've got." But it's too late. Thus, the power of the law cannot save. That scene appears to be the one that gets to Walter and causes him to invite the elderly people to his planet.

Another powerful scene is Ben's explanation to his grandson that he and his grandmom are going away. He tells him that where they are going they never get sick, they won't get any older, and they won't ever die. But he'll never see his granddad again. He tells the boy he'll leave soon, and he tells him to look up; that's where he's going. He essentially describes heaven, without speaking of God, but he can only describe it as what is not there, n ot what is there. He tells his wife, who is having second thoughts, one of the funniest lines in the movie, "You feel like we're cheatin nature. Well, the way nature has been treatin me lately, I don't mind cheatin her a little bit." These people are living as if this is only a temporary stopping place, which it in reality is. One of them closes his bank account and experiences the joy of giving away hundred dollar bills to every one he meets on the street. The one who harmed his marriage goes back to his wife and tells her that he'd rather live 6 months (he has cancer without the pool) with her on earth than in eternity without her. They treat their departure from earth like the saved treat their departure from earth, like they know they're going to a better place.

The grandson is no longer scared once he can say goodbye to his grandparents and knows they are going to a better place. He goes to his mother. Some must stay. Berney, the one concerned about violating the law, stays; it's his home. The spacecraft picking them up displays the powers of the God of Mt Sinai - ligthening and thunderings. They ascend on the boat into the heavnes, like Jesus going into heaven.