The horror... of wasting 2 hours on this trash...

Rating: 4/10 (5 September 2017)

In short: boring, unoriginal, and full of plot holes.
You know those cheesy, boring, and inconsequential 'horror' movies where a bunch of ignorant teenagers go camping and end up all dead? That's what this was, at its core, with better visuals. No substance whatsoever! The main elements that make a horror movie effective - an scary villain, characters we care about, and an element of mystery - are all missing here.
There was nothing original about the alien creatures. The baby xenomorphs were kind of cute, but certainly not anything to crap your pants about. Long gone is the horror we felt toward the xenos in the original Alien movies. They are just not scary anymore. The one new thing we learned is that the creatures like to chat with androids using language. Go figure... I just wonder how David learned to speak Xeno, and why a xeno would ever stop to have a chat with anyone. Stupid.
The other villain - David - is a little more interesting, but only on the surface. It turns out there isn't much under the hood - he's just an AI-gone-bad with a penchant for experimenting on anything made out of flesh and bones. We still don't know what motivates the crazy android, other than superficial curiosity, which is what the entire premise of the movie is based on.
When David showed up and saved the group (for a few minutes at least), I thought that the movie could still be saved at that point. David's appearance was a last hope for the story, because everything up until that point was just another stupid-teenagers-gone-camping-end-up-dead type of thing. But things only went downhill from there. David's story was such a letdown. Basically, he survived the events in Prometheus only to travel to another planet, kill off the entire population - those who created humans, and experiment on them. I don't even know what adjectives to use to describe this nonsense. Given how advanced our creators were (who also created the virus), I would question how any of this was even remotely possible, including how David's ship was allowed to approach the planet in the first place. I don't know how Mr. R. Scott approved this garbage. This part was very disappointing.
One aspect of David's backstory is a particular slap in the face to the original Alien movies - the xenomorph's origin story. It turns out the xenomorph that we are all familiar with was the result of genetic experimentation by a crazy android stranded on an alien planet. This is such a weak story that it cheapens the image and reputation of the big bad aliens we've come to respect and fear from the first two movies. I think the xenomorphs should be in horror...
While we're on the subject of androids, another weakness in the story is the fact that at the end of the movie David managed to pass for Walter and fool everyone. How is that possible, given the technology level? It's hard to believe that there is no way to distinguish the different androids. Why on Earth would Peter Wayland manufacture new upgraded androids that look and sound exactly the same as the old version, which was defective and unreliable. Why take the risk of confusing the different models? Even an idiot engineer/designer would consider differentiating the models in their appearance, or something that would allow people to tell them apart. That's just ridiculous and unbelievable. Another cheap trick to move the story along. Is this the best R.Scott could come up with to move the story along, and keep the door open for a sequel? Disappointing.
The crew... I don't know where to begin. What do you get when you mix some poorly written and generic characters with bad acting? You get A:C. A bunch of incompetent morons are put in charge of the mission of their lives - colonizing another planet, but instead they decide to stop by and check out the neighborhood, and go sniff some alien spores on another planet that they know nothing about. What could go wrong... They meet an older version of the android, and even though his model is known to be unreliable, they automatically trust everything he says, given that he's been there all alone for 10 years, simmering in his own broken emotions, and doing who knows what. Oh, and nobody thought to ask David what was the flash/flare weapon he used to repel the aliens - something nobody had been able to do before. But apparently that's not important.
It's amazing, considering the level of technology and importance of their original mission (colonization), how woefully unprepared these people were for anything unexpected. Their attitude and preparedness was, at best, adequate for a scenic stroll in a forest on Earth where mosquitoes are the worst enemy. I never got the sense from these people that they were on an alien planet. Utter lack of emotion. Some of the xenomorphs connected better with the audience. The characters are so generic and boring, that when they started dying off, I didn't care one bit for any of them. That's the main reason there was no horror in this horror movie.
The story in Prometheus was better because it had an element of mystery, e.g. aliens created humans, but who created the aliens, etc. A:C took a big axe to all that, and all that remained was a stinking carcass that melted through the floor. Intelligent horror movies are so rare these days...
Good special effects.
Other than that, I wish I'd never seen this movie. I hope I can unlearn the garbage I was fed.
If you do decide to see this movie, I suggest you leave your brain by the door, so it doesn't get contaminated with this virus. Watching this is like sniffing alien plant spores.