The Xenophobes

An interstellar mission has serious implications for a captain and her crew. Not only are they heading towards a potentially hostile planet, their return home may find them facing a new world order. Directed by Penny Cullers and Hal Dace, The Xenophones is a sci-fi indie feature film that is full of ambition and plays with some compelling themes about humanity.

Svetlana Tulasi plays Captain Shriya, a fearless leader for her crew which also include her husband Thelonius (Andrew Smith) and kids. The first half of the story sees them making their way on a six-year voyage to the planet Gliese, where signs of intelligent life have been picked up. A rocky first meeting involving missiles aside, the Captain manages to land her ship on the planet and have a meeting with a native, via a robot proxy. The mission is far from a success but things go from bad to worse when Shriya takes her crew home to find their 12 years away have been the equivalent of 60 years on Earth, and a lot has changed. Now they must navigate being strangers in another world, one where they seem like violent intruders all over again.

Ambitious to a fault, The Xenophobes plays its heart out trying to create a very big film, well, two films actually, and the result is enjoyable but stretched and, too often, amateur. From the shaky graphics of missiles launching from their ship, to fake guns and space backgrounds, viewers will be forgiven for being put off by the overall aesthetic of the film. But the real misjudgement comes in the editing of this movie. It is way too baggy, with so many unnecessary scenes, technical dialogue, and tedious build-up, that audiences are likely to fail to even get to the second half of the film, which is actually the one which deserved to be made, and given more resources. Shriya getting to the alien planet is a long, drawn-out affair which actually could have just been explained in a five-minute section of the movie, then just showing them coming back to earth and having them play out the story of them trying to readjust in the new Earth.

Some scenes hit harder than others and there is a great chemistry between the crew. Sequences of the family and the ship’s men and women struggling to find a place in their home are powerful and they endure a lot of hardship as the supposed invaders of a peaceful land. The core of the film is Shriya and Thelonius, it grounds the film and makes all of the chaos around them more palatable. Clunky dialogue and wooden delivery, however, hold back a lot of the scenes, and the melodrama is often enhanced by the score which becomes too noticeable too often.

There is a stronger film in there but it would need a space mission of its own to find.

Watch our Indie Film Review of The Xenophobes on our YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/tpZHQRnBRZI