Departing from the previous installments

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2020)

This review contains spoilers.
Alien Resurrection is a science fiction horror movie that premiered in 1997. The movie is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and with the story written by Joss Whedon. The movie stars Sigourney Weaver as Ripley 8, a clone of the original Ripley and Winona Ryder as Annalee Call. The movie is a follow up to 1992's Alien 3. Ripley is cloned and Weyland-Yutani continues to raise the Xenomorphs.
Alien Resurrection is an extremely contrived movie. These is not any reason for this movie to exist other than to create another Alien movie. This movie contrived a ridiculous way to bring back the Xenomorphs. The belief that a clone can contain the Alien embryo is ridiculous and harms the believability of the movie. The movie feels incredibly superfluous because of this aspect.
Sigourney Weaver feels weathered from the movie. The script does not give her many opportunities to have a varied performance. Instead the movie uses Ripley as a stoic superhuman which has never been the case in the past Alien movies. This departure is one of the reasons why the movie could not live up to the strengths of the previous installments in the Alien franchise.
The story uses the survival elements of the first two movies but it does not execute it well. The movie has a surprising amount of slapstick comedy that is ill fitting for this movie. I did not appreciate that this element was in the movie and it made for a movie that appeared to be parodying the original movies rather than continuing the horror genre.
The newer characters do try to give it their all in this movie. However, it is not enough to save the script from being average to bad at best. The movie has few redeeming factors and I wish that it was enough to save the movie.
I would not recommend Alien Resurrection.
Grade: C