Cocoon (film)

Did You Know?

• The score was composed and conducted by James Horner, and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony.
• The soundtrack was released twice, through Polydor Records in 1985 and a reprint through P.E.G. in 1997.
• In 2013, an expanded soundtrack consisting of over 62 minutes of Horner's score was released by Intrada Records and Fox Music.

Plot

A group of extraterrestrials, taking human form, arrives in St. Petersburg, Florida, originating from the planet Antarea. They lease a house with a swimming pool and hire a boat called the Manta III from a local captain, Jack Bonner, to retrieve cocoons from the ocean floor. Jack grows fond of one of the aliens, Kitty, and eventually learns she is not human. After the group explains that the cocoons hold other Antareans left behind at a former outpost on Atlantis, and that they have infused the pool water with a life force to sustain them for the journey home, Jack agrees to assist them.

Adjacent to the Antareans' rented house is the Sunny Shores Rest Home. Three residents—Ben Luckett, Arthur Selwyn, and Joe Finley—frequently sneak onto the property to swim in the pool. By doing so, they absorb some of the life force and start feeling younger and more energetic. The Antarean leader, Walter, catches them but allows them to keep using the pool, provided they do not disturb the cocoons or reveal the secret to anyone unaware of it. The three men bring their wives along to swim, but their friend Bernie Lefkowitz refuses to participate and also prevents his ill wife, Rose, from joining.

When other rest home residents grow suspicious of the three couples, Bernie carelessly discloses the truth. The residents rush to the pool, where Walter discovers them damaging one of the cocoons. He forces them off the property, and the Antarean inside the damaged cocoon dies soon after. Later that evening, Bernie finds that Rose has stopped breathing. He carries her body to the pool hoping to revive her, but Walter tells him the pool no longer holds its life force because the other residents drained it. Since the cocoons can no longer survive the trip back to Antarea, the group returns them to the sea with help from Jack, Ben, Arthur, and Joe.

As the Antareans prepare to depart, they offer to take rest home residents with them. Learning they will never age or die on Antarea, most accept, but Bernie chooses to stay on Earth. Ben tells his grandson, David, that they are leaving for good. When David's mother, Susan, finds out, she rushes to the rest home. Finding it empty, she calls the police.

Production

The film initially had Robert Zemeckis attached to direct, and he spent a year developing it. At the time, he was also working on Romancing the Stone for the same studio, 20th Century Fox. Before that film’s 1984 release, Fox executives saw a preview and disliked it. Combined with the commercial failures of Zemeckis’s earlier films, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars—though both were well-reviewed by critics—the studio fired him from Cocoon.

Ron Howard took over as director. Principal photography took place in St. Petersburg, Florida, from August 20 to November 1, 1984. Wilford Brimley was only 49 when cast as a senior citizen, turning 50 during production. He was up to 26 years younger than the actors playing the other elderly characters.

To appear older, Brimley bleached his hair and mustache gray and had makeup artists apply wrinkles and liver spots to his face. In 2025, Howard reflected on the cast, noting he had seven veterans. Among the male actors, he observed four distinct working methods. Brimley was entirely improvisational, a younger man with a more independent spirit who wanted to stay in the moment.

Don Ameche, by contrast, was old-school Hollywood: he wanted his lines, his mark, and to deliver exactly what the script required. The other two fell in between. Jack Gilford was a comedian, and Hume Cronyn was both a playwright and actor. They could improvise a bit with Brimley, which Howard felt elevated the film’s tone and brought honesty to the genre piece.

However, Ameche struggled with Brimley’s improvisational style. In rehearsal, he would tense up, unsure how to handle it. The writer and Howard began feeding Ameche jokes and lines he could deliver as if they were ad-libs. The retirement community’s main building featured a distinctive curving hallway.

After seeing Cocoon, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry admired the aesthetic. When sets were being built for Star Trek: The Next Generation, the hallway sets from Cocoon’s retirement home were repurposed and became the corridors of the Enterprise-D.

Reception

Critics were largely kind to Cocoon. On Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 49 reviews are positive, with the site’s summary calling it a gentle, heartwarming supernatural story about eternal youth that, while perhaps too sentimental for some, touches on poignant issues of aging. Metacritic gave it a 65 out of 100 from 18 reviews, meaning generally favorable notices. The film also performed well at the box office, earning over $76 million in North America and ranking as the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1985.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Ron Howard’s sweetness toward the subject and the veteran cast, noting the film’s bright, expansive look of a hot-weather hit. She felt Howard’s touch stayed steady even when the story faltered in its latter sections, moving into predictable, Spielberg-inspired science fiction after a promising start. Variety described Cocoon as a fountain of youth fable that imaginatively blends galaxy fantasy with the lives of aging mortals in a Florida retirement home, calling it a mesmerizing tale.

Brimley/Cocoon line meme

A popular internet meme about aging centers on Wilford Brimley's age when Cocoon came out. He was just 50 years old at the time, which is relatively young for an actor playing a senior citizen. In 2012, when Tom Cruise turned 50, people compared his action hero role in the Mission: Impossible series to Brimley's elderly character in Cocoon. They pointed out that Cruise was still leading a major action franchise at the same age Brimley was playing someone much older. (Both actors had also appeared together in The Firm in 1993.) This comparison created the Brimley/Cocoon line meme. The meme states that any actor who reaches exactly 18,530 days old—the precise age Brimley was when Cocoon premiered—has crossed that line. A 2018 New Yorker piece by Ian Crouch suggested the meme shows how views on aging have shifted since the film's release.