Director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) proves to be a wise hire by 20th Century for the studio’s continuation of its long-running sci-fi horror franchise. Director Ridley Scott launched the property with 1979’s critically acclaimed Alien, earning enough at the box office to warrant three sequels. The legendary director returned to mostly dormant property (we don’t count the mid 2000s Alien V. Predator cash grabs) for 2012’s Prometheus and 2017’s Alien Covenant.
Attempting to expand the lore with prequels led to mixed reviews and diminishing box office results, leaving many to believe that Covenant would be the Sarcophagus for the franchise.
However, seven years later Alvarez utilizes a smaller budget and simple story to reignite the film. From cinematography to score, the below the line elements deliver an artistic and haunting entry that has a real texture missing from recent entries (with larger budgets).
The script takes some liberties in regard to character logic, but the character driven elements make this a winner in a genre where characters are often an afterthought. Particularly, I would highlight the script’s ingenious moments regarding camouflage with temperature and utilizing a loss of gravity on the vessel to nail-biting tension (imagine a streams of acid blood casually floating towards you in zero gravity).
It’s a winning combination that is a standalone outing that first time viewers can enjoy, while featuring plenty of franchise callbacks like evil androids and the powerful Weyland-Yutani corporation.
Indentured servants is probably the term to describe the blue-collar miners, who are constantly cheated on their time/pay by the staff of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) is the protagonist who dreams of escaping this hellish planet without sunshine. She her best friend is an sweet but glitching android named Andy (David Jonsson), and is not fully accepted by their human friends.
Rain and Andy join her friends (two of which are with child and in a relationship), feeling utterly dejected by their situation until the conversation turns to a Weyland-Yutani corporation lost in space. The vessel still has power and enough cryo-pods to let them cryo sleep (without aging or dying) for a multi-year mission to the nearest nice planet.
Once on board the ship, it’s clear that things have gone terribly array and the face-grabbing Alien precursor is on the hunt for a host.
Rain’s ex-boyfriend Tyler takes the lead along with Kay (the pregnant compatriot), the baby’s father Bjorn, and Navarro. Andy’s ability to interface with the onboard computer system is crucial and during a moment of crisis, Rain installs a more advanced processing chip from another android into Andy, granting him access to the station while also updating his software.
This also changes his “prime directive”, making him loyal solely to Weyland-Yutani and not his longtime mission of supporting Rain… of course, this “hack” is slowly revealed over the next few scenes. Andy’s most obvious upgrade is greater knowledge and no glitching mannerisms.
The most pertinent issue at the moment is that an alien precursor species successfully wrapped itself around Navarro’s face. Tyler removes the creature with quick speed, but the android known as Rook warns that there’s a high percentage risk that she’s already been seeded.
Bjorn loses all logic at this stage and attempts to flee with Navarro and Kay on the ship Corbelan, leaving Tyler and Rain to die essentially. Once on board the Corbelan, (as expected) Navarro’s seed erupts from her chest and scurries away for later torment — the ruckus on the ship causes it to crash into the Romulus ship’s hangar and triggers a shift in its spatial orbit.
The script now has a ticking clock plot device as there’s only a few hours before the ship veers into the deadly planetary rings of a nearby celestial body. Surviving the alien threat is only half the battle, and it’s a welcome way of upping the ante in the film.
A pregnant Kay regains consciousness and joins Bjorn only for them to run into the now adult alien Xenomorph. Bjorn decides to attack it with a stun baton, which leads to the Xenomorph’s to impale Bjorn with a tail and dribble acid blood to mangle his corpse.
Across the ship, Rain, Tyler, and Andy navigate to the bay while avoiding the facehuggers with some technological biohacking. Basically, raising the room’s ambient temperature in an alien-filled room to camouflage the trio as they walk through the room.
Once they reach the other side, they realize that Kay is moments from being the prey of the adult Xenomorph. Andy refuses to unlock the door, revealing his mission to retrieve the samples of the compound called “Prometheus fire” by evil, disembodied android Rook. It’s the extract from the xenomorphs DNA after being combined with human DNA, which is a utilized in the script’s finale for a boss battle beyond standard “Alien” fare.
Rain and Tyler locate rifles in an attempte to arm themselves, though android Andy points out that the acidic Xenomorph blood will melt the ship’s external hull, causing atmospheric decompression and death for the humanoids.
Rain and Tyler find Kay in a cocoon, Tyler is killed and Andy is incapacitated. Badly injured, Kay injects herself with the Xenomorph derived compound during their escape. Rain returns to remove Andy’s “control” chip, and he becomes his old, pure android personality. Rain disables the station’s gravity, where she shoots the xenomorphs and prevents the blood dripping onto the hull (the most ingenious element of the script).
Rain and Andy make it back to the Corbelan as Kay gives birth to a rapidly growing mutant xenomorph-human creature that looks like the giants featured in Prometheus. Rain ends up being the sole person left to fight against the mutant, and is able to eject the creature into space in a nod to Signourney Weaver’s classic maneuver.
The film ends with the uncertainty of if this ship will make it to its destination as Rain goes into cyro sleep as the sole member of her crew surviving the mission.
The film allows for a great exploration of the lore while playing within the confines of the genre and delivering moments of brilliance. You leave the cinema feeling more in line with the original 1979 film than the latter, less-original entries of the franchise.
Letter Grade: B