XENO - Mark Reviews Movies

Xeno, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 19, 2025

A child befriending an extraterrestrial is not a new story, but in Xeno, writer/director Matthew Loren Oates makes two choices that are key to why this one feels different. The first is that the film takes this idea quite seriously, in that it's about more grown-up matters than one might expect and the consequences of this friendship can be quite severe.

The second is the alien itself, which is not the cute, cuddly puppet one might anticipate from a description of the basic premise. No, this extraterrestrial being looks as if it belongs in a horror movie—with its sleekly predatory appearance, its shiny dark scales, its gooey and yellow blood, and its pools of blackness for eyes. We haven't even described the alien's mouth yet, which juts out in a way that it's the first thing anyone coming into contact with it from the front would encounter. Technically, the teeth are even more prominent than that, since they stick out a jagged angles from the alien's jaw and come to many, sharp points.

This entity looks, sounds, and behaves like a nasty customer, frightening the dog of a random hunter who has the misfortune of coming across the alien after its spherical spaceship crashes in the middle of the desert. Who on Earth—quite literally—would want or even think to become friends with this kind of beast?

Well, she's named Renee (Lulu Wilson), a 15-year-old girl who keeps a snake, a couple lizards, a scorpion, and a tarantula as pets. This is as good an answer as any to the inherently ridiculous question put forth by the setup, but for as funny as the idea of a teenage girl who likes creepy and crawly things finding companionship with a ferocious-looking alien might be, the conceit is not played as a joke here.

Instead, Renee is also grieving the death of her father, dealing with a mother who refuses to confront her own grief, still adjusting to moving from her home to this remote and lonely place, and putting up with the mother's new boyfriend, who arguably becomes a bigger monster than the being from another world. Oates certainly hasn't made a family-friendly kind of film, in other words, but he has made one that adults who grew up with similar fare or teenagers who can relate to our isolated protagonist could appreciate.

The tone is vital here, because the story is overtly replicating a particular formula. Renee doesn't feel welcome at home, where her mother Linda (Wrenn Schmidt) has latched on to her boyfriend Chase (Paul Schneider). Mom says it's because the guy, who drinks a lot—even after starting to go to support group meetings—and is quick to anger, needs her. Linda like the feeling of being needed, and Renee doesn't need to say a word for us to understand how much that comment stings.

At school, Renee is an outsider, apart from Gil (Trae Romano), who likes that she's smart and weird, although the poor kid has no idea just how strange she can be. He finds out the hard way.

Before that, though, Renee takes her four-wheeler out to the desert to get away from Chase for a while, discovers a makeshift trap near a big hole in the ground, and finds the alien snared by one of its legs. The beast scares her away, but being fascinated by scaly and slimy things, Renee borrows Gil's video camera, gets some bolt cutters, nabs Chase's pistol from his van, and heads back to the alien. After freeing the creature, it makes a telepathic connection with the girl, and whatever information was exchanged between them, the process bonds them.

The plot, of course, has Renee hiding the alien in the basement, and soon enough, a pair of government agents named Keyes (Omari Hardwick) and Brown (Josh Cooke) come looking for the beast. Keyes later reveals that he knows what this kind of alien can do, and the toy car he carries with him all the time speaks a lot about why he is so determined to catch the thing before it can harm or kill anyone else. Hardwick's performance is equally and subtly sinister and sympathetic, because, as the character puts it, Keyes doesn't want to be the villain in this scenario but will rise to the occasion with gusto if he thinks it's required.

Everyone here, in fact, is quite good, with Wilson playing the kind of shyly rebellious kid many will recognize and relate to, Schneider sinking his teeth into a guy who just seems like hopeless case until he reveals how angry his own awareness of that can make him, and Schmidt playing the mother with a degree of heartbroken selfishness that we can neither excuse nor blame. In little ways, these characters feel like authentic people, and that goes a long way toward giving this familiar tale an unexpected level of emotional weight, as well as stakes that feel more down-to-earth than the fantastical setup would suggest.

The alien itself, brought to life mostly with practical effects and puppetry, is quite convincing, as well, and while that's important for the central illusion of Xeno, the film is about more than just its major special effect. It has a brain, smartly subverting a common story idea, and a heart, in the way that subversion is used to tell a grounded tale of grief and heartache and how it never really fades.

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