At this point in 2024, there are more bad alien movies than good ones. So, something that pays homage to the originals really piqued my interest.
Visually, it's vintage "Alien/s" albeit with modern polish. It looks great, spectacular even, especially the space scenes. The opening scene was perfect.
The main problem with the movie is that there is zero tension, no sense of dread, and it's not scary, except for the last few scenes, which I enjoyed.
The movie tries to force tension and intensity with another plot device on top of the alien-the equivalent of a bomb timer countdown. It doesn't work as it trumps the alien threat, they become inconvenient road blocks.
The facehuggers have been reduced to annoying pests-something you can just bat away.
The aliens are cannon fodder, and the cast just seems to bump into them. I didn't get the sense that they were being hunted. E.g The sentry cannon scene from Aliens, this movie references. But you don't see the aliens dieing in Aliens, you do here which makes them look weak. On a side note this scene also reminded me of the Starwars prison corridor "boring conversation anyway".
Many scenes played out like a QuickTime event in a video game, with characters over-explaining and then narrating their actions: "I'm going to press X to do this." It's as if the audience needs to be told what they're watching and why they should feel scared or tense because there is no tension in the scene, despite an alien being present.
I have concerns about adding more law etc into the franchise. I don't need to know how the alien works, it's not scary if you know everything about a monster. That's the point of a monster. They use this new found law to get past some aliens, again it was like a scene from a video game.
It really nails the alien aesthetic, its a high paced movie with video game level writing and characters. Somewhat fun but ultimately disposable.
