"Attention... non human presence detected." I liked it.

Rating: 7/10 (17 December 2005)

Alien: Resurrection starts by informing us, the viewer that is, we are on a huge spaceship the 'USM Auriga Medical Research Vessel United Systems Military' where on-board there are 'Standing Crew: 42 Enlisted, 7 Science Officers'. The sinister & misguided Dr. Mason Wren (J.E. Freeman) & his team have recreated Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) by cloning her using blood samples, some 200 plus years after she originally died. They want the unborn queen alien inside of her & surgically remove it. Wren has military backing & General Perez (Dan Hedaya) pulls the strings & gets him what he wants. Enter 'The Betty Commercial Freighter Standing Crew: 6 Unregistered', it's crew of criminals & general scum have a delivery for Perez. A delivery of bodies in suspended animation which Wren uses to create more aliens. As you could probably guess it's not long before the aliens have escaped their rather inadequate cages & are rampaging all over the place killing everyone in sight. Ripley, aided by the alien DNA inside her, must once again do battle with the alien & prevent them from reaching planet Earth...
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet I liked Alien: Resurrection, I would probably rate it as third in a very good series of horror Sci-Fi films behind Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986) but ahead of Alien 3 (1992). The script by Joss Whedon isn't a massive departure from the previous instalments, a group of people trapped in an isolated location in a race against time to survive &, of course, plenty of dark corridors. Alien: Resurrection tries to take the best elements from the first two, the spaceship setting from the original & the action from the second, & it does a pretty good job at entertaining for an hour and fifty odd minutes. The strong paternal themes are here again & run throughout the film, the character's are a bit clichéd like the obligatory tough guy, the token black character, the young female & the disposable character's who get no screen time at all except for when they are killed but Ripley is very different this time around which makes for an interesting new angle if nothing else. It moves along a nice pace & is never boring or uneventful. I must admit though I didn't like where Alien: Resurrection went with that stupid looking alien human hybrid at the end.
French director Pierre Jeunet (who apparently spoke very little English & had a translator on set at all times) lights the majority of the film in dark browns & oranges which gives it a slightly drab & dull look. He films the action scenes quite stylishly with some nice shots although that ricocheting bullet is the height of stupidity, I would like to see anybody actually try it! Overall the film has a nice style to it & is pleasing on the eyes. Thankfully he doesn't forget about the gore & Alien: Resurrection has to the goriest entry in the series, people have the tops of their heads bitten off, heads squashed, someone is frozen & breaks apart, aliens stick their tongues into & through people, a room full of dead bodies with their chests burst open & a cool bit where an alien burrows through someones head & pops out of their forehead plus there is a room full of gross genetic experiments gone (very) wrong.
With a supposed budget of about $70,000,000 Alien: Resurrection is undoubtedly a fine looking film with that big budget Hollywood polish to it. Slick cinematography good production values & sets while the aliens themselves have never looked better, apart from one or two poor, by todays standards anyway, CGI shots. I love all that thick slime the aliens drool as well, of which there is plenty. Unfortunately I think the alien hybrid thing at the end looks absolutely awful & like someone wearing a rubber skull mask brought from a joke shop. The acting is OK but they aren't given much to work with.
Personally I think Alien: Resurrection is a pretty good action/Sci-Fi/horror film that delivers on all counts, although it's nothing we haven't seen before. Still, definitely worth a watch.