The only place for the series to go.

Rating: 8/10 (19 October 2002)

One of the great things about the 'Alien' series is that it has benefited from a staggeringly bizarre range of directors, each of who-- from Ridley Scott to James Cameron to David Fincher to Jean-Pierre Jeunet -- brings an almost totally different vision into the mythology. As mythology, the 'Alien' series has also always been more than just the sum of its parts--consider that famed fantasy/surrealist artist H. Geiger helped design the look for the original Alien and its hive, and you begin to get at the 'intangible' elements to the series; 'Alien' has always wanted to be that thing crawling straight out of our nightmares. The '79 and '86 films were stark, simple, and brutal, and the '92 film was brooding and disturbing (to say the least).
Well. The interesting thing is, the Alien meme doesn't belong to the mythology, but to whoever is creating it. David Fincher's directorial debut was Alien 3; his version of 'nightmare incarnate' seems pretty prudent when you consider his work in something like Fight Club. Why bring this up? I think that Jeunet is just about the most interesting directorial choice for this series, at this point. What, exactly, can we learn from the nightmares of the director of 'Amelie' and 'City of Lost Children'?
Simply, I think there is a lot more subtly and a lot more depth in this movie than people are giving it credit for. Many of the spiritual, religious, and human relationships are, in a way, very simple (as they are in Amelie or C.O.L.C.), but they cross-over in some wonderfully complex ways. This is the *only* movie in the 'Alien' series to truly recognize how much the 'Alien' phenomenon comes from our own heads, our own dreams & nightmares . . . the direction of the Alien series is inwards, and this is further 'in' than any of the previous films. The cinematography is appropriately wonderful, too-- fans of the series & genre itself are already spoiled on mood lighting and tension-riddled close-quarters shots, but these things are expressed with all of Jeunet's tremendous gift for mise-en-scene. Ryder is great, and of course so is Weaver; she may be tired of playing Ripley by this point but she has brought to "Resurrection" a curious maternal passion for Ellen Ripley, who by this point must be pretty damn sick of being chased through air ducts.
Overall, this is a beautifully realized vision; it is even, in some strange ways, a comic treatise as well, while still keeping that requisite 'Alien' creepiness. The last scene in the movie is, of course, horrific and even horrible, but even that has its grotesque place within the nightmare vision. Oh - and a fun factoid: Sigourney Weaver actually made that over-the-shoulder basketball shot-on the first try.
In the end, consider something dear old Nietzsche said (perhaps in anticipation of this series, eh?): "If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back." Indeed.