Fede Alvarez’s remix of the Alien films so far and direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 original is a perfectly serviceable thriller, just as tense, creepy, and damp as you’d want an ALIEN film to be — but it probably goes maybe two or three direct references/callbacks/swipes too far, especially given that we had a theatrical rerelease of that original less an four months ago.
The story: ever-present evil mega corporation Weyland-Yutani extends the work contract of poor working class brunette Rain (Cailee Spaeny), who just wants to get off the godawful always-dark colony planet she lives on with her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), a glitchy android her father saved from the scrap pile. This sudden and arbitrary contract extension leaves her quite vulnerable to a proposition made by her ex Tyler (Archie Renaux): join him and his family as they investigate and steal a derelict Weyland-Yutani ship in orbit which can get them to more hospitable climes and a better life. The ship, however, turns out to be a derelict space station where experiments were taking place on samples of a very familiar hostile life form.
Well made through-and-through — if there’s one bit of “fan service” I adore, it’s the loving shots of all the very analogue space tech they’ve reproduced to maintain the classic ALIEN setting — and the moment-to-moment set pieces are exciting and really where all the film’s unpredictability lies: someone’s gotta get out of this alive, and the deck seems stacked against them, so, HOW? I do also appreciate that most of the judgment calls people make here mostly make sense: even the initial decision to flee the mining colony makes sense given how the characters keep talking about their parents’ miserable recent deaths. (As always in these films, the enemy is not just the alien, it’s also capitalism.)
As with the two Ridley Scott prequels, the most fascinating performance is by the actor playing the android; Jonsson as Andy has a compelling vulnerability to him, even when a mid-story upgrade makes him a more cool and calculating character. The others, designated asshole Bjorn (Spike Fearn) aside (he has his reasons, but his unrelenting cruelty to Andy is really NOT helpful, and the one point where I did feel any of the characters were actually engaging in actively bad decision-making), I found charming enough, though they’re nowhere near as interesting as, say, the crew of the Nostromo — and the film invites the comparison a little too strongly with, again, callback after callback, all across the breadth of the franchise, even into movies that, timeline-wise, haven’t happened yet. (Indeed, the one big laugh in a film that doesn’t have many was a very funny reprise of a line that, chronologically, the original speaker hasn’t said yet.)
The one big mark against it, to me, is just overfamiliarity — and the frustrating thing is, so much else works that it doesn’t really need all the callbacks. I guess it’s just expected in franchise filmmaking at this point. It feels like some producers, bean counters, or maybe even the filmmakers themselves have internalized this notion that fans go to these things to do the Leo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD meme, pointing at all the things they recognize, and complaining if there aren’t enough things to point at. So yes, on the balance I had a good time, it’s just that all the too-direct lifts, especially towards the end, left a slightly funny aftertaste. Still absolutely worth a look if you’ve got any affection for this strange, strange franchise.