Audiences who don’t enjoy watching a good old-fashioned creature feature shouldn’t check out Xeno. The coming-of-age sci-fi movie relies on the tropes of the adventure genre, but it also hides a surprisingly dark streak as it follows the relationship between a teen and her new alien best friend. Lulu Wilson leads the cast as Renee, the misunderstood protagonist with no friends but plenty of snakes, lizards, and arachnids in her bedroom. A darker, grittier take on the classic E.T. narrative audiences are familiar with, Xeno sees this young girl process her grief and loneliness through her unexpected connection with an alien.
Xeno pays tribute to the genre legacy of the 1980s adventure movies it draws from, not unlike the recent fantasy film The Legend of Ochi. However, Xeno is far more rooted in the real than some of its more fantastical counterparts. Written and directed by Matthew Loren Oates, it’s clear that Xeno is a work of science fiction in order to use the alien as a tool to explore the emotional themes that Renee struggles with throughout the story. Xeno succeeds to varying degrees, but never fully finds its niche.
Xeno Works Overtime Trying To Tug On Our Heartstrings
The Movie’s Big Swings Don’t Always Have An Emotional Impact
I wanted to like Lulu Wilson a lot more than I did, but the young actress wasn’t quite up to carrying the weight of the story on her shoulders. The movie relies on her scenes with the тιтular alien to propel the narrative, but Wilson doesn’t have the depth to handle these moments alone. Despite this, I liked the creature’s design, courtesy of the Henson Company, and its expressive eyes did pivotal work, convincing me the human girl and alien monster were bonded. However, this points to one of the larger issues with the film.
Xeno has a lot of promise and ambition when it comes to the scope and weight of the story it wants to tell, but it never goes far enough to justify the emotional reactions it asks of us. Many of the elements that are supposed to tug on our heartstrings end up being formulaic and predictable, sparking a bit of an eye roll instead of empathy. Paul Schneider’s character, Chase, the half-baked, ᴅᴇᴀᴅbeat boyfriend who represents everything wrong in Renee’s life, is too hammy and comically evil to be truly scary or foreboding.
It soon becomes clear that Chase’s lack of depth is a recurring theme. Every antagonist in the film, including Omari Hardwick’s Jonathan, fails to read as more than a one-dimensional villain, preventing Renee from having what she wants. Her mother, Linda (Wrenn Schmidt), has a little more going on beneath the surface, as she shares the grief that follows Renee’s character, but for a genre movie as character-driven as Xeno is supposed to be, we never get to know very much about our heroes. Renee’s identification with the alien makes sense, but neither she nor the others attempts to interrogate it.
What defined Xeno the most for me was how dark the story was willing to get, and the level of escalation that it reached. Renee doesn’t exorcise her grief by the end of the movie; if anything, she has more of it, but the rather anticlimactic conclusion lets us know that she might be better equipped to handle it from now on. The film leans into adult territory on the heels of its more juvenile jokes and tone. This juxtaposition is too jarring for a film like Xeno, which struggles to ᴀssert its idenтιтy and thesis throughout the narrative.
Xeno Isn’t Original Enough To Stand Out Within Its Genre
The Movie Doesn’t Distinguish Itself With Its Story Or Characters
For a film that begins on a rough, but relatively light, note, Xeno‘s trajectory comes as a shock, and I never believed that the movie earned this narrative turn. However, even for all the risks it takes, nothing about it reads as memorable enough to make me care deeply about its subjects. Set against the backdrop of Anywhere, USA, the story flattens itself so that anyone can relate to Renee and her isolation. In doing so, it loses the elements that could’ve made it unique and therefore noteworthy.
It’s clear that Xeno and the filmmaker have a lot of love for the inspirations behind the project, and that there’s a strong emotional throughline that was intended to connect with audiences. However, Xeno doesn’t end up standing out in terms of the science fiction or coming-of-age genres. The story doesn’t take us anywhere particularly new or exciting, and Renee is empathetic, but we’ve seen versions of her many times over the years. Xeno doesn’t make any gross missteps, but it doesn’t have the juice to stand the test of time.
