The Path To Paradise Begins In Hell

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2017)

The second instalment in the Alien prequel series finds director Ridley Scott caving in to audience expectations by doing away with most of the philosophical ideas he introduced in Prometheus and focusing more on the horror aspect to create a traditional scary movie. Alien: Covenant is quite an improvement over its predecessor, for it brings back the tension, suspense, violence & screams in all its unadulterated glory while validates the existence of Prometheus in the process.
Set 10 years after the events that transpired in Prometheus, the story of Alien: Covenant follows the crew of a colonisation ship that is headed to a remote planet with thousands of colonists & embryos onboard. Things are set in motion when a neutrino burst damages the ship, prematurely awakens the crew & results in few casualties. Soon after, the team intercepts a radio signal from a nearby planet and head there to investigate, only to encounter a threat beyond their imagination.
Directed by Ridley Scott, the first half of the film is brilliant as the esteemed director maintains a firm grip on pacing & tension to build up suspense and encapsulates the picture with a foreboding atmosphere. The next half is where things begin to dwindle as the plot heads into a familiar zone before culminating on a predictable note. Another drawback that makes its way from Prometheus to this feature is that the characters are poorly scripted, and remain just as dumb & uninteresting as before.
When it comes to technical side of filmmaking, a Ridley Scott film rarely leaves much to complain about. Be it the set pieces or the alien species, everything that shows up in the movie is refined to the smallest of details. Cinematography envelops the images with a dark, ominous & eerie climate with its smart camera-work, cold colour palette & apt lighting. Editing is brilliant in the first half but tumbles down in the remaining half. And Jed Kurzel contributes with an infernal score that also incorporates tracks from both Alien & Prometheus.
Coming to the acting department, Michael Fassbender's performance is the only one that leaves a positive impression. Utilising his silent yet piercing gaze to near perfection, he puts up a controlled act that carries an uneasy vibe and gets more unnerving as the plot progresses. Waterston plays her character in a straight-forward fashion but there's nothing about her character that's remotely interesting. The rest of the cast is more or less forgettable. In short, there are only two fascinating characters in the movie, and Fassbender excels at playing both of them.
On an overall scale, Alien: Covenant is nothing more than a dumbed-down version of Alien with a final twist that's absurdly obvious. It discards the existential ambition of Prometheus and picks up all the gruesome moments from the preceding chapters to cater to the masses. And, in a way, it implants a belief that Scott was probably on to something profound with Prometheus and now we will never get to see his original vision. Thrilling, entertaining & satisfying yet wholly insignificant, Alien: Covenant adds nothing vital to the saga nor takes the series in a new direction but after the disaster that was Prometheus, this deep-space terror is just what the doctor ordered.