Really good if you ignore the connections

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2011)

A ship's investigation of a distress signal given off on a distant planet introduces them to a savage creature that begins to hunt them down one-by-one inside the ship.
While this may be regarded as a legendary film, this one instead comes across as overrated. While it may have a countless number of influences from the different aspects surrounding it (the set-design, ship, the alien, etc) the fact remains that, if taken on as a singular film devoid of any of its influences, this one isn't all that great. Plus, for all the imitations, none of it is really important to the film itself and speaks far more to the reaction of the public rather than anything else to do with the film itself. It's so slowly paced and lifeless at times that it's a struggle to stay invested in what's going on, hardly inventive at all since these are where it's money-makers are spent, the building-up of the suspense in what's going to happen next. Giving a reason to remain in a state of suspense is just as important as the release, and this one forgets to do that constantly. You also have the fact that this one barely contains anything about the alien, either featuring scenes of it or getting to know it, that there's just such a dearth of knowledge about what it's doing that there's very little beyond the physical, which is pretty impressive admittedly, to really get worked up with this one over. As mentioned, the psychical appearance of the creature is really the film's best idea, suitably foreign and extraterrestrial in concept and execution and looking quite imposing when first viewed with some really nice features about it that make it something to be feared. It also has a few rather fun shock scenes that are quite impressive, which are well-known and won't be repeated and the stalking scenes in the later half are really suspenseful, so there is some good stuff here, but overall this is still somewhat overrated.
Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and animals in danger.