THAT ALIEN, SOUND (2025)

That Alien, Sound
Directed by Brando Topp
Written by Brando Topp
Starring Mia Danelle, Will Tranfo, Deyo Forteza, Amy Hill, Richard Masur
Running time 1 hour and 37 minutes
Streaming now

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

When I first saw That Alien, Sound, back in 2024, I came away from my viewing quietly reeling. The film, from writer / director Brando Topp, takes the basic premise of John Carpenter's 1984 sci-fi drama Starman (written by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon) and turns the knobs a little bit. Adjusting the settings to make it, if not more relevant to today's concerns than Starman, at least more focused. I'm not saying anything negative about Starman, mind you, I gave it a solid four stars on Letterboxd, but the Carpenter film is unsurprisingly a little paranoid while Topp's film is all about acceptance. Both are bittersweet.

When Micah (Mia Danelle) collapses in the record store she works at, screaming and clutching at the headphones she's wearing, her coworker / boyfriend Shannon (Will Tranfo) rushes to her aid and sets a precedent for the film that just kept pleasantly surprising me: no matter how crazy what Micah is saying might seem, everyone pretty much rolls with it. As we'll learn, Micah isn't really Micah anymore, she's a sentience; a once formless intelligence from deep space that accidentally hitches a ride on the song Micah was listening to--"Disco" by Death Valley Girls--into Micah's body. She didn't mean to, she didn't even seem to know that was possible, but it happened. And now she's learning what it means to be, not just physical, but human. Most of you reading this right now are likewise human, so you at least have a vague idea of what she's in for.

The former Micah, now going by the name Sound, meets Micah's family, spends time with various groups of assorted friends, and eventually forms something like a plan: perhaps, if they can broadcast a Death Valley Girls performance into space, it will act as a beacon to Micah's consciousness and she can return to her body, and Sound can return to the void. Sound is a gentle soul who seems very aware that piloting someone's body without their consent has consequences, but the story doesn't need to externalize them. There's no tangible penalty if, for instance, Sound were to smoke a cigarette with Micah's brother Deyo (Deyo Forteza), except that Sound would know it was a selfish thing to do, so she doesn't. 

Mia Danelle is phenomenal. I didn't reference Starman at the top of this article by accident. Jeff Bridges' performance in that film is very highly regarded. His take on an alien being learning to exist in a human world is different, and slightly more physical, while Danelle's is mostly experiential. You're constantly asked to believe that this person is realizing what a sense of smell is, or that she can shrug (which is apparently pretty cool), and you do. 

Evan as That Alien, Sound builds a case that Sound's story might not be true and that, as many of the people close to her posit, this is just Micah's way of dealing with feeling overwhelmed, we see person after person playing along, whether they believe it or not, despite having very little to gain. That is what stayed with me most after watching: the kindness. Whether her story is true or not, whether Sound is the most extraordinary person you've ever met or just a girl having a hard time, where is the harm in having a little empathy? 

You never know what someone is going through until you walk a mile in their shoes, or their body. It may be a cliché, but it's one that too few people take to heart. That Alien, Sound makes the case that we could all stand to be a little softer with one another, a little more understanding, and it makes it with heart and good humor. There is no admonishment in this film, no straw man bad guys or tenacious government agents hunting Sound. There's just some kids treating each other kindly and making it look easy to do. This is a film that leads by example, and I'm profoundly glad it exists.