Alien: comatosed

Rating: 4/10 (11 January 2020)

After the disjointed shambles that was 'Prometheus' 'Alien: Covenant' seems to confirm that making prequels to the classic 'Alien' is simply a bad idea. Whatever Ridley Scott can conceive of is not as good as the vacuum of unknowns from which the initial monsters sprung in that original film.
For some reason metaphysics and pseudo "hi-culture" themes are layered inexpertly onto a monster movie franchise.
The plot requires levels of willful ignorance on the part of its cast of characters and, just as much, on the audience to make any kind of narrative sense; probably because this is an oddly positioned bridge between two films that occupy almost unrelated creative locations in 'Alien' and 'Prometheus' despite their sharing a director and a cinematic franchise.
The result is a boring and derivative film.
However a couple of the action sequences are well staged, particularly the rescue scene. Also the reappearance of iconic designs in the aliens life cycle is nice to see; especially the movements of the adult xenomorph, which in various scenes of 'Alien: Covenant' harks back to its upright stiff 'Alien' appearance and it's more charging 'Aliens' and it's animal like 'Alien3' designs.
All characters apart from the female lead are almost completely underwritten and, barring the stand in captain, forgettable.
Death scenes and horror sequences are barely horrifying due to a complete lack of emotional resonance let alone raw human emotional saturation.
I rate 4/10 because I liked some of the xenomorph design work and the rescue sequence in particular was pretty well staged and developed "outrageous exploits" stuff: good fun.
However the rest is so repetitive and recycled from the alien franchise, other film of Scott's, and unrelated sci fi films of the last 30 years and so blandly handled by a director who appears more preoccupied by unnecessary and un-illuminating pondering that this is definitely a low point in a franchise which is starting to collect quite a lot of them.
I think that the alien franchise has a good horror monster movie still in it, but I now doubt if Ridley Scott is a man capable of making it.