Not even so bad that it's good

Rating: 2/10 (27 May 2018)

Let's begin by talking about the opening sequence. I don't like it. The cuts are so awkward that you have no idea what's going on. With the knowledge of what happened at the end of Aliens we find out what happened a few minutes later, but the opening title sequence is just awkward. The slow motion that we see a few minutes later serves absolutely no purpose to the story (this is not the only time there's unnecessary slow motion). The voice of the prison staff member who makes the announcements is annoying. Also, why is it a prison for people with YY chromosomes? No matter how much sci-fi you throw in to this movie, this is absolutely impossible. The biological mother of a human has two X chromosomes and the biological father has an X and a Y chromosome, so where does the second Y chromosome come from? The prisoners all look like men, so why call it a YY correctional facility? And why do the jailers have the logo of Weyland-Yutani on their clothes? If you look closely you will see that the Weyland-Yutani symbol is all over the prison. Why do Weyland-Yutani have the authority to arrest criminals?
As Ripley asks the exact same question I'm pretty sure the writers were aware of this, why doesn't this maximum security prison have any weapons? The movie itself acknowledges this problem, I have no idea what the writers were thinking.
Something I won't blame this movie for is that Newt doesn't appear in it. For those who don't know, that's because Carrie Henn chose not to be in anymore movies. On the other hand, she's really lucky not to be in this movie because it's really really bad. And I'm really glad I didn't have to see how a child would've been treated in an environment like that.
After Ripley wakes up we get a really good emotional scene. Unfortunately, we go back to the religious aspect of the prison very quickly, which really doesn't fit into the movie and slows it down. This happens so many times.
I didn't care about the problems the prisoners have with each other at all. Neither did I care about any of the problems the staff members had with each other. One of the main problems with this movie is that we WANT the prisoners to die, we WANT the xenomorphs to eat them. They're rapists, murderers and child molesters, that's why we hate them and they don't deserve saving. The dialog in this movie is really really bad. There's so many lines that sound like the writers came up with them while being drunk in a bar and listened to what the other drunk people were saying. And why would Ripley want to live amongst the prisoners for a week? Why not be protected by the doctor for a week?
I didn't even get to the jumpscares yet. There's so many movies the music gets louder and dramatic to tell us something scary is about to happen and then it's just a person showing up. Alien and Aliens perfectly understood not to do that.
And what's with the score in this movie? It's really loud and over the top and in two scenes it's just really annoying rock music...
The scene where we get our first look at the xenomorph is really bad, too. There's blood everywhere and that's it. Nothing builds up to this moment, there's no suspense, it's a scene that's supposed to be scary but it's really not. The other xenomorph attack scenes are exactly the same. It's nothing but blood. The idea that the xenomorph doesn't kill Ripley when it first has the opportunity is ridiculous and the explanation is absolutely nonsensical. She's carrying a xenomorph queen inside of her and she says that the xenomorph that's running around is not going to kill her because it won't kill any of its kind. The xenomorph running around doesn't know there's another one inside of Ripley, it can't see inside of her and none of the previous films indicate that they have some sort of x-ray vision. In fact, there's ONE shot in Alien or Aliens (I don't remember which movie, but I'd rather say Alien) where the camera shows what the xenomorph sees and its vision is just like a human's vision, just a little worse. We also get several shots from the perspective of the xenomorph in this movie and nothing indicates that they have an x-ray vision.
I should also mention that the way the leader of the rescue team is dressed looks ludicrous. He wears some white plastic onesie with ridiculous glasses, he looks like he belongs in some tasteless 80s music video. Just some moments after we see him for the first time two prisoners run into each other, which is probably the most ludicrous moment in the entire movie. No, just wait a few more minutes because the xenomorph literally... blows up!? *What a great idea* What exactly did they pour on it to make it *cough cough*... explode? I guess the answer that makes the most ""sense"" is acid because we see cracks in the xenomorph's head right before it... explodes, but that doesn't make any sense either because xenomorphs have acid blood themselves and can therefore resist acid perfectly. And of course, Ripley has to die in the most clichéd way possible. And her death scene looks like utter garbage because of terrible terrible CGI. Her sacrifice was supposed to be the big moment of the movie, but it just comes off as stupid.
I'm currently watching all of the Alien movies. I've seen Prometheus once and I've seen Alien: Covenant, Alien and Aliens multiple times. I own these four movies on Blu-ray. Alien and Aliens, Aliens in particular is the absolute best cinema has to offer. This movie however tries so hard to be Alien with ONE xenomorph taking out all people in a place one by one with the action of Aliens, but it fails on so many different levels. The only redeeming qualities are some good performances and I guess the xenomorphs. I rated this movie a 2/10. This is by far the worst Alien movie that I've seen so far. I haven't seen Alien: Resurrection and the Alien vs. Predator movies yet, the latter ones aren't canon.