A space-age Pandora's Box

Rating: 6/10 (10 September 2019)

In an age of interstellar space travel, does one really want to take a job that requires investigating when a signal is picked somewhere in the ether? Hell, it could be a warning, an SOS, or anything!
Such is the contractual lot of the crew of Nostromo, a hulking merchant spaceship returning to Earth with a load of planetary ore. It isn't long before a hideous space creature gains entry to the mother ship, because it's clinging to a crew member's face. Against her better judgment, and under peer pressure, commander of some sort Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) chucks the usual quarantine rules. After all, they can't leave their seriously wounded buddy on a godforsaken exoplanet. Or could they? Ripley's a tough sort and prefers that they do. When she's overruled, you know it's not good.
In the wake of knock-offs that followed it -- 2017's "Life" comes to mind -- 'Alien' doesn't seem that original today. Sure, the space fiend is hideous, dripping with goo, and murderously quick. I found it only mildly scary. Yet the movie does generate some suspense aboard ship, with its close quarters and dark corners.
There's no question the creature startles when it bursts from the gut of the sticken crew member, in a perverse twist on Caesarian birth. However, its later attacks seem predictable. Although it IS creepy when Ripley finds the beast has stowed away aboard her escape shuttle. I'll admit I couldn't relax truly till I saw the final credits roll.
Am I curious enough to see a sequel? Perhaps just the first. But I'm certainly not racing to the last remaining video store in Manhattan to reserve it!