- Content: “Alien Adventures”
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What You Need To Know:
XENO tells a heartfelt, exciting story promoting kindness. It’s a simple story in the vein of classics like ET. The effects are masterfully done and believable. Eventually, Renee realizes that having a kind heart like her father is everything. However, she also tries to do everything on her own, despite getting help from a classmate at school. Also, XENO has some foul language, scary violence, a dysfunctional home life, chronic drunkenness, and intentional injury to a teenager. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong and extreme caution.
Content:
Strong moral worldview promotes kindness, loyalty and doing the right thing, but the teenage protagonist lives in a dysfunctional household with her widowed mother and the mother’s alcoholic boyfriend, plus teenager relies on herself and luck;
11 obscenities (including three “s” words), one strong profanity using the name of Jesus, one GD profanity, one OG profanity, and teenage boy uses a towel after wetting his pants when he gets scared and passes out;
Strong violence, especially toward a teenage girl, scary alien creature has long exposed teeth and attacks and kills several people, alcoholic man issues verbal and physical threats toward 15-year-old girl, there’s an implied attempted strangulation. one government officer is single mindedly obsessed with capturing alien creature by any means necessary, and he breaks a minor’s finger and wrist, a fatal car crash is shown, people are pushed and thrown and attacked, and animals are hunted;
No sex scenes but teenage protagonist’s widowed mother lives with her drunken boyfriend and exposes daughter to a dangerous situation;
No nudity, there is a question of the alien creature’s sex, with a character indicating if it has genitals;
Excessive drinking by an alcoholic boyfriend, but implicitly rebuked (some drunken violence shown);
No smoking, but teenage protagonist’s mother suffers from depression and is shown taking prescription drugs and implicitly abusing them, and she’s often passed out or falling asleep; and,
Strong miscellaneous immorality not always rebuked such as widowed mother endangers her teenage daughter’s wellbeing but eventually realizes her error and tries to protect her daughter, teenage daughter is flippant to her mother but does care about her, mother’s drunken boyfriend is rude and deceitful, rude boyfriend seems to resent the teenage daughter’s presence, teenager often lies about where she is and puts herself in danger from both alien creature and the authorities, teenage protagonist steals some items including a gun, teenager lies to authorities in what she believes to be the best interests of an alien creature, and this does lead to a man’s death, the authorities themselves are not trustworthy and blatantly harm teenage girl in pursuit of the alien creature.
More Detail:
XENO begins with a crash landing of an alien craft in the desert. When a man discovers a strange alien creature, the creature eats him. Unaware of the attack not far from her house in the desert, Renee Lawson is having a funeral and cremation of a beloved pet lizard before school. Her mother, Linda, is falling asleep at the kitchen table as her mother’s drunken boyfriend, Chase, stumbles into the kitchen and ridicules her. Renee believes Chase killed her pet lizard, so she keys his car on the way to school.
At school, Renee displays her intelligence in class. Having no friends at school, she sits by Gil who has classes with her. He compliments her report last week about lizards, but she avoids talking about her home life.
After school, Renee’s mother is late picking her up. On the way home, they fight about Chase, with her mother defending him. In her room, Renee has several unsettling pets. She tells the snake he is her best friend. She plays a song on her banjo and sings to him when he refuses to eat.
At dinner, Chase is drunk again. He and Renee fight, and she leaves and rides her four-wheeled ATV across the desert. Renee stops and sits on the ground. Realizing she’s stopped in front of a strange wreck in the middle of nowhere, she grabs her flashlight. She finds an otherworldly, scary creature growling. Renee realizes its leg is caught in a trap, so she decides to help. Once she releases the scary creature, she gets back on her ATV and speeds away afraid.
The next day she borrows a camcorder from Gil and goes back out to the wreck prepared. Filming herself, she finds the alien and releases the trap wondering if it’s dead. When she walks away, it jumps and as saliva drips all over her she sees the long protruding teeth threatening, but then it backs away. She sees its eyes and doesn’t see a monster. Gathering camera footage of the creature. She sees helicopters overhead. She tells it that they are bad, and they will hurt it. She tells it to hide.
Later, she finds the alien outside in the dark, and she tries to take it somewhere to hide. Instead, it spits a strange substance and light into the air which lifts her up. The next morning, she wakes with the alien sleeping near her. She takes it into the basement to hide and names it Croak.
Meanwhile, government authorities are searching for the alien. Chase continues to lie to Linda about being sober. Gil comes to Renee’s house looking for the camcorder and demands to know what the monster is. She eventually shows him. He gets scared, urinates on himself and passes out. After waking up, Gil agrees to keep Renee’s secret. Together, they find a way to get Croak to eat.
A cop shows up to ask Renee about what she knows and threatens her to cooperate. After a drunken attack by Chase to Renee, Croak attacks the walls of the basement. Renee’s mother thinks it’s an earthquake and throws Chase out of the house.
Renee sees that she can’t keep Croak in the basement any longer, and they go out into the desert where she encourages Croak to run. Gil meets them, and he confesses that someone talked to him but says he didn’t tell them anything. When she gets back home, Chase, attacks her again. Croak runs back and attacks, bringing the authorities right to her door.
XENO is a heartfelt, exciting movie with a strong moral worldview. It’s a simple story in the vein of classics like ET. The effects are masterfully done and believable. The evil of the antagonist characters is palpable. Eventually, Renee realizes that having a kind heart like her father is everything.
However, XENO includes some foul language and scary violence. There’s also drunken behavior, a dysfunctional home life, chronic drunkenness, prescription drug abuse, and intentional injury to a minor. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong and extreme caution.
