Editorials
This Alien is Pure Evil: 35 Years of ‘Xtro’ Insanity
Thanks to the well-received release of Alien in 1979, a wave of extraterrestrial based horror followed in its wake. Some blatant rip-offs, most terrible or forgettable, and a few so absolutely bonkers that they’ll sear into your memory forever upon first viewing. Harry Bromley Davenport’s insane Xtro falls squarely into the latter. Released 35 years ago in U.S. theaters on January 7, 1983, Xtro has spent the last few decades rising from critical savaging upon release into well-loved cult classic due to its amazing, enduring special effects and ballsy kitchen sink approach plot.
From a critical standpoint, the ravaging makes sense. Despite a rather simple setup, in which Sam Phillips is abducted by aliens right in front of his son’s eyes only to return altered three years later, it quickly becomes something far more complicated and not always the most coherent. A lot of that is due to keeping the extent of Sam’s alien makeup so shrouded in mystery that we sort of have to infer what his new alien abilities can do. It doesn’t help that it’s sort of all over the place. While it’s clear that Sam has returned to claim his young son, Tony, it’s not as clear why sucking on his son like a human juice box means transference of alien DNA. Even the editing can be a bit sloppy at times, with dialogue being heard before the character speaking it even appears on screen. There’s also a few plot threads that don’t make much sense or never bother to get resolved (Award winner for least empathic and competent doctor here). Character introductions are something Davenport wasn’t really interested in exploring either.
Yet, somehow, these idiosyncrasies only enhance the hypnotic charm of Xtro. Thanks to the weird juice box sucking, and Sam’s transference of alien abilities to his son, Tony develops the power to manifest anything he thinks up with his mind. Here’s where the kitchen sink aspect of the film really shines. While Sam is trying to reconnect with his estranged wife, Tony is torturing the neighbors with panthers, killer circus clowns, toy tanks, and life-sized toy soldiers. The very types of things no one anticipates when signing up for a sci-fi horror movie.
From a visual standpoint, it’s also easy to see why Xtro was hardly a favorite among critics. Gloopy, slimy, gory, bloody, and messy, Sam and Tony make a gross alien-hybrid father and son pairing. The most infamous scene landed Xtro on the supplementary list to the Video Nasties, a list of films that couldn’t be prosecuted but were liable to confiscation under a “less obscene” charge. That scene was the gnarly impregnation and subsequent birthing of a fully-grown Sam. It’s every bit as visceral as it sounds.
The special effects team is what elevates Xtro into something remarkable. From the goriest of kills and the squeamish, cringe-inducing ways in which these extraterrestrials seek reproduction, and even the various creature effects for each different iteration of the alien beings, Xtro is impressively revolting. So memorable, that even horror fans who haven’t seen the movie have still likely seen images from the film, notably the very creepy car scene early on with the crawling alien at the edge of the road.
Davenport pretty much dumps every single idea he had into this epic study of gory nihilism. Unnerving backward walking aliens, human hybrid aliens with pointy teeth, full-blown aliens, gloopy victim cocoons, slimy alien eggs, and everything in between, Davenport leaves nothing unexplored on a visual level. Plot-wise, Xtro has a bit of everything as well. It’s a sensory onslaught that leaves you feeling confused, yet in a that you can’t help but appreciate. Roger Ebert referred to Xtro as a “completely depressing, nihilistic” film in his review, and I agree. But unlike Ebert, I feel that’s what makes Xtro work.
Davenport went on to create two more sequels to this tour de force, but none held a candle to the magic of this crazy sci-fi horror. By no means a masterpiece, I’m so glad films like this exist. It’s the type of film that shouldn’t work at all, and still does. A brutal descent into complete madness, held up by fantastic special effects. Here are two 35 more years with one of the meanest sci-fi horror films in existence.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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