Creature Effects Are Impressive Over A Plodding Plot

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2017)

Like every continuation of a series, "Alien:Resurrection" has the instincts of a child who has a fit after their parents took their favourite toy away. The sketchy, slimy alien creatures and the dark, claustrophobic scenarios are curiously provocative. However, the story fails to deliver even through its hardest effort in adding a new twist in the franchise. The film itself had the right material for newly inventive ways to make the series fresh, but it never tugs at your emotions and the impact falls flatter then diluted soda. In fact I was surprised more at just how fuzzy Dan Hedaya is and he's not the main attraction here. Sure fans of the series had came into the theatres in drones and it did do quite well at the box office, but it was highly doubtful if its welcome was long termed.
Sigourney Weaver is back for the fourth time returning from the dead after 200 years as a hybrid human/alien Ellen Ripley and she's still just as tough as ever battling those slimy aliens as she's been doing since 1979. It's no surprise that Weaver is in her comfort zone and still looks buff and sexy and boss for a person who's by now in her late 40's. And when she did that back basketball shot, I think she's the only person who could get away with doing that.
As the franchise continues, the alien creatures continue to get more awkward each time. But the looks still have some originality each time and in this movie the aliens depicted here stand out above the rest. The inspiration for the alien creation comes from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet who got the horrific physicality of the creatures from his previous outings "Delicatessen" and the always inviting "The City of Lost Children".
The horrific characteristics of the film blends nicely to the dark settings, the heavy metal and the disgusting manifestations coming out of the creature's vials along with an exciting underwater scene along with the fear and the loss of humanity are just some of the spectacular traits from Jeunet's warped mind. Plus he brought his favourite actors Ron Perlman as a heavy-hitting antagonist and Dominique Pinon for some much needed comedy relief.
Winona Ryder was a nice new added attraction to the series as an engineer aboard the spaceship Auriga the centrepiece to where all the fun takes place. Unfortunately 12 sniveling aliens are heading to Earth, planning to conduct evil biological experiments to the civilians.
Ryder arrives on the scene with a ragtag group of smugglers seems out of place with the kind of cynical, barbaric individuals that make up the population in this franchise. Her chocolate brown eyes and her deadpan dramatic expressions has that token bright light for what has been a dark and dreary journey so far. Finally we can say this movie has a character with a small dosage of humanity.
Mean is the focal characteristic in this film and the violence renders no apologies about it. We are treated to a delightful opening scene where we get an up close look at some performing open-chest surgery with barf-inducing detail with Brad Dourif as the mad doctor. The final result is that Ripley has given birth to a bouncy baby alien. You don't see that everyday that's for sure.
Like every splatter fest in movies the aliens dine on delicious cuisines like guts, severed heads, and yummy brains. We also get insightful information about predatory subjects very few people talk about like predatory alien sex. Yeah "viewer discretion advised" makes its mark here.
Granted the film does have creative vibes going for it, so there's no need to go through plot details no matter how narrow it is. The thick of it all is that this film depends too much on the visuals and not much emphasis is based on the story.
We get fragments of a story that Ripley returned from the dead after two hundred years and her alien child has come back as well and she's on the hunt to slay these hideous evil creatures. The aliens are still the same gross, slimy creatures we all seen before, only now they're populating.
In the span of five years since the last "Alien" film back in 1992, the special effects have truly come a long way. The transformation from archaic puppetry to the more advanced use of CGI has created a new, but not entirely for the better way of upgrading the franchise. Plus these new batch of aliens possess a more humanoid look to them and can display emotions. It's something to think about here.