AFF '25: Hello Out There’s Would-Be Road Trip to Area 51 is a Ride to Relish

Until a flying saucer lands on the White House lawn and Klaatu walks down the ramp, stories about aliens will often be stories about uncertainty, whether the aliens are explicitly an enigma or ultimately reveal themselves to be infamously ugly motherfuckers. Likewise, many stories about road trips at least start with a destination in mind, even if the journey gets wild. Director Otis Blum and writer Eve La Puma’s Hello Out There, which played at October’s Austin Film Festival, combines both storytelling modes. The result is a gentle, wise, often quite funny picture, and a highlight of the festival.

Minnie (Chloe Bennet, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) is a well-regarded long-form journalist. Grief for the expected death by cancer of Alex, her longtime partner and briefly her husband, has kept her away from the field. Now, Minnie is trying to make her way back to her work and herself by interviewing Jed, a UFO truther who was once a scientist at the infamous Area 51. If he’s a charlatan or a goofball, he’s more grounded than most. To interview the paranoid Jed, Minnie’ll need to pass a test, one that will take her across New Mexico. Since a neck injury means Minnie can’t drive, she turns to her cousin Rex (Phil Dunster, Ted Lasso) for a lift. Rex is a recently retired punk rock guitarist who’s getting used to sobriety. He and Minnie were close as kids, but are nearly estranged as adults, not helped by Rex’s behavior before he got sober. 

On paper, Rex is strictly Minnie’s driver, and Minnie is committed to seeing Jed’s test through so that she can get her story. In practice, their journey through New Mexico swiftly grows a personal side, as the cousins find themselves navigating the thorny process of reconciliation and the thornier questions of what comes while living with grief and recovery.

If Hello Out There was a total failure narratively, it would still be an incredibly effective advertisement for New Mexico. Cinematographer Alan Caso captures the Land of Enchantment’s landscapes and architecture skillfully, especially when putting the latter in the context of the former. It’s a beautiful-looking movie, never flashy, but always carefully composed and often striking. Moreover, Hello Out There is a resounding success narratively, so the glamour shots of New Mexico are a welcome bonus included with the fine character study.

Bennet and Dunster’s Minnie and Rex are emotionally intelligent grown-ups who care about each other. They’re also both reeling from major, life-defining traumas, and while they’d like to be friends again, they’re still walking on eggshells around each other. When they cross lines, it doesn’t result in a screaming match, but in mutual discomfort that they have to try and untangle without causing further harm. Minnie knows that Alex is gone, and she’s mostly accepted that, but some small part of her wants the impossible, and she can’t shut that part off. Rex has a solid grip on his sobriety, but he’s fallen out of love with playing music, which had been his life, and now he’s stuck with questions about himself that he cannot answer. There are no easy solutions for either of them.

The duo’s journey across New Mexico takes them from wild places like Roswell’s International UFO Museum and Research Center to a hotel that used to be a children’s asylum to more intimate settings, like a hotel room where Minnie and Rex decide to party and the home of Judith (Jennifer Beals), Alex’s mother. Throughout, the constant is the cousins’ conversation, which winds from the heavy (whether or not they can rebuild their relationship as friends beyond distant care) to the delightfully silly (a glorious, cackle-worthy argument about the expression of the man on the cover of A Little Life) and back again. La Puma’s dialogue ebbs and flows to match the moment. Sometimes Minnie or Rex have something they need to get out and do, sometimes they cannot find the words to say what they want to say, and sometimes there is nothing to say. It consistently rings true, even when the conversation in question is about a possible alien abduction.

Dunster and Bennet carry the majority of Hello Out There themselves. Bennet plays introspective, and Minnie’s work as a writer means that she tries to take care with her words, especially since she’s finding her way back to her work after a long while away. Dunster plays nervy, and Rex’s anxiety about where he was and where he’s going as a person manifests as an uncomfortable wobble between directness and uncertainty. They’re a lovable pair, and fun to spend time with. Bennet and Dunster work well together, and both their individual and shared stories are dramatically rewarding. Beals likewise does very fine work as the picture’s key supporting character. Judith has a better handle on herself than Minnie or Rex, but a better handle is not the same thing as a flawless life. 

Hello Out There’s comic moments click. Its dramatic moments stick. It’s as incisive in its study of Minnie and Rex’s foibles as it is gentle in its treatment of their navigating their lives. It ends with a darn good joke. Put simply, it’s one of 2025’s best films.

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