Well, that was a surprise. The plan seemed clear enough: over the course of Prometheus and Covenant, the Alien franchise had gotten a little too far from its nightmarish roots — body horror, monster scares, and corporate malfeasance giving way to existential searches for meaning, the war of creation vs. creator, and well yes, corporate malfeasance. (Some things never change.) So here comes horror aficionado Fede Álvarez to co-write and direct a movie that will, if not reboot, then at least reset things. Bring on the throat rape, the bursting chests, the phallic threat and dread of pregnancy. Most of all, bring on the fear that made the first one so successful despite (because of) the rarely glimpsed xenomorph. And then, whoopsie! There is effective horror here, but it doesn’t rear its head until very late in the game. Before that, what we’ve got is an artful blend of much of what has come before. Álvarez has done his homework, though maybe a little too well: there is a studied air to things that saps some of the viscerality out of all the viscera. (At least there are plenty of practical effects.) A scene in which our brave band of young would-be space raiders must traverse a room full of Facehuggers that are built to respond to sound and changes in temperature — stay frosty, indeed — seems like the sort of thing that our man ought to relish, a chance to make us hold our breath in sympathy. And yet…meh. The surprise is that the stronger stuff is in the idea department: the rejiggering of the corporate malfeasance, the shifting of humanity’s relation to its androids. An effective, engaging outing, sadly marred by the resurrection of a dead character that sends us into an uncanny valley more unsettling than many of the film’s more intentional horrors. (2024) — Matthew Lickona
This movie is not currently in theaters.