Solid dark fantasy horror with some mis-steps in characters and motivation (totally contains spoilers!)

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2017)

Alien: Covenant is a solid dark fantasy horror film with a lot of good going for it but a few massive mis-steps along the way.
First, the god: special effects, atmosphere, and mood were on par with any other Ridley Scott film save for the astounding original ALIEN and Blade Runner, which were masterpieces. Cinematography is solid, acting by the three principle characters, while not jaw-dropping, was decent (especially Waterston—I hope to see her in a lot of other films, and Fassbender brought his A-Game as always), and although this wasn't a straight-up horror film like ALIEN as it had a more dark fantasy vibe, I enjoyed that.
Second, the problems. There were a few but they were pretty severe. Spoilers ahead. The biggest problem my wife and and I had with the film was that this team of scientists go to an alien planet effectively on a whim and proceed to make massively stupid decisions:

The crew doesn't do any analysis of the alien planet before flying down to investigate.

The crew doesn't send the android (or presumably robots—they have robots in the future, right?) down first but instead takes a whole human team.

They land they drop ship on WATER instead of trying to find fertile ground. Any sort of parasite or small insect could be hiding there.

They disembark the drop ship without MASKS and then proceed to touch and interact with their surroundings without caution. In fact, not wearing a mask is the main reason the problems start happening ... twice. There must have been some sort of mouth, nose, ear covering they could have scrounged up if they didn't actually have them on the ship (which they should have!).

On an alien landscape, WATCH WHERE YOU STEP! And don't touch anything! If we ever did find a habitable planet, we probably wouldn't get attacked by extra terrestrial creatures but instead the biggest threat would be bacteria, parasites, all things microscopic.

When investigating a giant city full of dead bodies ... ask your host about what the hell happened!

Don't wash your wounds in alien water!

Don't look directly into an alien pod!

Basically the main issues in the film were tactical and preparatory. There were a few others, such as the xenomorph taking minutes to mature when in ALIEN it took almost a day, and some other quibbling problems. Also, this is billed as a horror film but I found it to be more of a dark sci-fi fantasy (which I actually enjoyed). It's a good setup for a third film and has several nifty surprises (not "twists," per se, but things that make you go "aha!") and it ties up a lot of loose ends from Prometheus. And the Hannibal-like dark operatic mood during the second act of the film is great (particularly when David and Walther have conversations on the nature of serving in heaven vs reigning in hell). But you'll have to overlook some massively stupid human decisions about 1/3 of the way through the film to get to that point.