Give it another go

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2004)

This review relates to the special edition on the Quadrilogy box set
**SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS BELOW** SPOILERS**SPOILERS
What can i say, i love this film. Right from the beginning you know that it's going to be nothing like Aliens, it feels like more of a sequel then Aliens in spirit and atmosphere. Everything has been stripped right down and is almost raw. Ripley has been stripped of anything that gave her comfort, hicks, newt, bishop, the film even goes so far to take her hair. She looks sick, like a patient suffering a terminal illness, and as the film progresses we find out that it is terminal and the alien queen grows inside like a cancer. She is the only one left, Hicks and Newt are long dead, even their names have slipped away as they become simply the child and the man.
Reversing Ripleys decay is the birth of a new alien, perversely bursting from a dead ox. The alien is different now, moving on all fours, even more animal like and further removed from anything human. As the films progress through the series the connection between Ripley and the alien becomes stronger and stronger. In this film she carries part of it with her and now in a reverse of what has gone before she is not at risk from the outside threat, only that which is growing inside her
This film was clearly a difficult birth and this anguish and difficulty is all up on the screen. Here's a film which began shooting with no concrete script having been greenlighted on a different concept. It's only the skill of the director Fincher and the excellent cast which hold it together. The film is infused with the dark grimy view that became famous in Se7en, The Game and fightclub. Only here it was years ahead of its time and unacceptable to audiences after the whizz-bang wow factor of Aliens with its gung hung macho chestbeating. The accusation that it's just a bunch of identical looking bald british blokes running round in the dark is one made out of the great ignorance. The film may have been made without a clear script but Finchers visual style still gives it structure and substance. An excellent score underpins the emotional content of the film.
This film is unforgiving, there is nothing to uplift you or give you hope. Ripley seems doomed from the moment the film begins and the ending seems a perfect full stop to the trilogy, spoilt by the horrendous and unforgivable Alien Resurrection. Watch the DVD extras on the other disc, it gives an insight about what Fincher was trying to do and what the fox executives were trying to do. The ignorance of the two execs that give interviews is astounding and their defence of their 'creative decisions' makes for good watching. If you saw this film on its cinema release and hated it nows the time to give it another go, it might surprise you.