Aliens in cinema have long been a mirror for global anxieties and hopes. From Cold War-era metaphors for foreign threats to Steven Spielberg-style friendly companions, extraterrestrial life has represented our greatest fears and our deepest desires for connection. The new sci-fi adventure film “Xeno” endeavors to join this lineage, but crash lands just as hard as its titular alien.
On the surface, “Xeno” — a title derived from the Greek word “xenos,” meaning “foreigner” — is a movie we’ve all seen before: A lonely teenager befriends a lost alien and embarks on a mission to protect their new companion from relentless government pursuit. In fact, it pays heavy homage to its iconic predecessors like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Starman” and “The Iron Giant.” But the film’s biggest flaw isn’t a lack of originality; it’s an inability to make the familiar story feel fresh.
We’re introduced to Renee (Lulu Wilson), a girl whose only friends are her pet arachnids and lizards, as her family moves to New Mexico following her father’s death. This loss is the reason why Renee and her mother Linda (Wrenn Schmidt) struggle to connect and constantly argue. In a scene riddled with lazy CGI, she meets an alien and names it Croak. After this, government forces discover the creature’s presence on Earth and begin hunting it down.
While “Xeno” is undoubtedly an action movie, there’s an attempt to examine teenage emotions through Renee’s relationship with Croak. Renee confides in the alien about her father’s death, which is supposed to break up her spunky front and garner some sympathy. However, this point of connection is never fully explored, due to an emotionless performance from Wilson. There’s no passion or anger driving Renee’s grief, which is necessary considering that Croak is non-verbal and expressionless, therefore unable to react appropriately to her turmoil. Because of this, the opportunity to flesh out this otherwise conventional alien movie plot into a complex reflection on teenage grief remains untaken.
Admittedly, the movie does have some emotional weight. Linda is clinically depressed, relying on prescription drugs to ease the pain of her husband’s passing. Her extreme methods of coping — especially the move to New Mexico in the first place — ignore confronting her grief head-on, threatening her relationship with Renee. But when the government captures her daughter, Linda’s concerned motherly instincts kick in, something Schmidt perfectly captures. This maternal determination evokes genuine audience sympathy, something the film frequently lacks.
Omari Hardwick plays Jonathan Keys, the lead agent in pursuit of the alien. His character feels stale, sticking to the one-dimensional motivation of wanting to capture the alien for no purpose other than appeasing the government. While unclear if it was writer-director Matthew Loren Oates’s intention to make him so surface-level or if it was simply Hardwick’s acting, the only value this villain adds to the movie is prompting some high-energy action sequences.
“Xeno” struggles to bring life to the sci-fi genre. An unconvincing Wilson and an archetypal Hardwick majorly disappoint, and the film’s substitution of genuine narrative development with rushed shortcuts isn’t much better. The result is a well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed homage that fails to earn its place in the canon of iconic alien cinema.
Contact Alikhan Kaukenayev at [email protected].