The Good, the bad and the ugly.

Rating: 6/10 (4 July 2016)

Every Alien installment has had a new director at the helm, also bringing about a new style for the series. While Ridley Scott made a more claustrophobic sci-fi horror, James Cameron went all out and made a big combat movie and David Fincher made a more bleaker film which looked better and more "arty". After that film's failure, people thought the series was doomed and wrote it off until a 4th Alien film was announced with Jean-Pierre Jeunet at the helm, director of Delicatessen, City of Lost Children and the later film Amelie. So is it good? Heh... nope. Is there any redeeming quality to it at all? Well let's just say this: you know the film's in trouble when you actually have to think what was good about it.
The story... Ripley's blood/DNA, taken from the hospital ward of the prison colony, is used to create a clone of her former self. Aboard a military science vessel, where now the Alien species are being bred by some deranged scientists, a group of smugglers are hired to provide "bodies" for these disturbing actions. Sigourney Weaver is haunting and rather creepy as this new Ripley who has Alien DNA and a "relationship" with the creatures. Winona Ryder is Call, a renegade and obsolete android who's a recent addition of the space pirates, that get more than they bargained for on this delivery. Fittingly Ripley and Call show the most human character despite their strange background. Most of the other characters are nothing more than bait for the Aliens. Dominique Pinon as the crippled pirate is an exception. Being there are few surprises, this film works better as a Sci-fi/horror adventure film. The story itself is worthy and interesting but underdeveloped. Too much time is spent on the gory attacks. There are too many unnecessary characters as well.
The action in this movie wasn't even slightly believable, starting with the shootout between the criminals and the soldiers aboard the ship. At very short range, every soldier is killed and not a single criminal even wounded. Ripley escaped from certain doom on several occasions - I never felt as if she was in any peril at all. Then the action kept coming to a dead stop just when things were getting interesting. For instance, when everyone is in a huge hurry to get off the ship, Ripley decides to stop and wipe out a room full of failed clones. Truly one of those "Aw, you gotta be kidding me" moments. The set design and the look of the film though was starting to get better, relying on dim corridors and small lighting, much like the first film. And an action scene involving an underwater set is quite thrilling and the aliens certainly never looked better. But ultimately these are kind of superficial since a great scary experience like Alien or a blast like Aliens is sorely missing here. Overall, this movie is not a worthy sequel to the other films. Even Alien 3 was much better than this - it had loads of atmosphere, characters that one cared about, and you actually felt as if they were in extreme danger.
Overall rating: 6 out of 10.