The Alien, Nate
2017 · 9m
Directed by Justin Leyba
Genres: comedy, romance, sci-fi
A lonely guy dressed as an alien for a costume party finds an unworldly connection with an actual alien.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is aggressively sweet in a way that should feel saccharine, but the film somehow commits to the bit hard enough that it becomes genuinely strange—which is exactly when subversion works best.
A modest romantic comedy that understands its debt to classic meet-cutes, though the sci-fi framing feels more ornamental than structurally essential to the form.
The entire film hinges on whether you believe the tenderness between these two characters in a single scene, and Leyba's decision to play it straight—no winking, no undercut—is what makes the whimsy actually land instead of collapse into cuteness.