Insulting!

Rating: 4/10 (15 September 2005)

I really cannot begin to express how much I hate this film. Even though it is not the worst film with aliens in it (that title belongs to AVP: Alien Vs. Predator) it sure is close. The first thing I'm going to do is make a pros and cons list so people will get a general idea of how I perceive this film
Pros: The effects. Cons: Everything else.
First the pros. This film has the best effects of all the series but that really isn't very surprising. The first two films were beautiful in their own ways and I thought the the third film was very atmospheric as well but they were all before the era of computer graphics and as Alien Resurrection is from 1997 (ergo after Jurassic Park which was the first film to really use the potential of computer graphics) it must be fairly straightforward to assume that the effects will be better. They are. The effects are stunning and even today (2005) they are believable. The director, Jean Pierre Jeunet, has a very distinct visual style and it works beautifully. From the space shots to the design of the aliens themselves. It all works. We finally get to see the aliens walk around and seem a 100 percent believable. We also get to see them swim which is nice little addition to their range of abilities. The gore in the film is very graphic and this too works fine but aside from the effects the film is pretty awful.
The acting doesn't exactly suck but its not very good either. Sigourney Weaver does her best but her new abilities and the fact that she is not the same character as in the previous films does that we don't really feel with her in the same way any longer. Her performance is passable though and I have nothing against her. I don't know what Winona Ryder is doing in this film and her talent does seem to be completely wasted. Ryder's emotional range as an actress is very high but we don't really get to see it in this movie (for obvious reasons) and that is a darn shame. She is degraded to being eye-candy. Dominique Pinon, Jeunet's favorite actor doesn't really do that much in the film and quite frankly isn't all that good even though I am impressed with his English. Most French actors have a very thick accent but Pinon doesn't. Ron Perlman who has since become quite a big star has nothing to work with in this film and thus his performance is not really worth noting. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag. Some do decent jobs (for example Brad Dourif) and some do not.
The story is what is really disappointing and (I feel) insultingly bad. The two first films had brilliant stories and even the third had a passable story (considering it never had an entirely finished script) but the story in the fourth one is just hauntingly bad. I won't go into the details as I might accidentally spoil the plot but needless to say it is really, really bad. Especially the ending is very anti-climactic. As for it being a horror film. Come on there isn't anything remotely scary about the film and the action is average at best.
All in all a film that should be avoided almost at all costs. The only saving factor is the effects but effects don't make a movie.
4/10