Fede Álvarez’s new instalment in the Alien franchise presents as a younger, grungier, back-to-basics effort, moving away from the grandiose cosmic reach of Ridley Scott’s films Prometheus (from 2012) and, five years later, Alien: Covenant while attempting a return to the downbeat conspiracy paranoia and anti-corporate satire that made the original so unforgettably good. It also, very startlingly, brings back a major character from the 1979 Alien, the actor involved having perhaps signed away CGI image use rights at the time, or conceivably their descendants have been paid a royalty fee.
The resulting movie is a technically competent piece of work; but no matter how ingenious its references to the first film (let down, however, by borrowings from the A Quiet Place franchise) it has to be said that there’s a fundamental lack of originality here which makes it frustrating. There’s isn’t a single person involved, from director to stars to people on craft services who wouldn’t have been better employed actually working on something new.
