James Cameron's Unmistakable Mastery Makes 'Aliens' a Consummate Fright-Fest!

Rating: 9/10 (24 August 2015)

'Aliens', the sequel to Ridley Scott's eerie space thriller, is a high-tech, souped-up war movie - a rare instance where a follow-up deviates from the formula and finds an effective rhythm in propelling the story.
Having overcome a terrifying alien predator, Ripley (a fantastic Sigourney Weaver in her best performance of the series) is found drifting through space in a life-pod by a salvage ship and brought back to a space station, where Burke, a representative of The Company, tells her that she has been unconscious for 57 years. To her horror, Ripley also learns that the planet on which she and her crew found the creature in 'Alien' has been colonized. It isn't long, however, until Burke tells her that they've lost contact with the colony (a series of scenes involving those colonists confronting a mysterious spacecraft shows us that Ripley's worst fears are realized: the alien life forms have reappeared) and asks her to accompany a platoon of colonial marines to the planet as an adviser. She's sent in with a crack squad of marines and hurtles headlong into a hi-tech house of horrors that delivers plenty of shocks and nail-biting suspense.
Once the marines land, the film becomes a feast of fights and special effects, from the high-tech weaponry of the marines to the aliens themselves. But 'Aliens' wisely never allows its admittedly eye-catching and inventive gizmos to control the film. Rather, they provide striking punctuation! It's almost all suspense-building, as it expertly draws out the audience's mounting anxiety. For well over two hours, the audience sits transfixed in a web of despair, and around every corner there exists a bleak reality that never lets up, even in brief moments where an upper hand seems within reach. Consider this: The first full-grown alien does not appear until after the one-hour mark as the full figure of the alien eludes full photographic exposure during many of the confrontations, and that only adds to the adrenaline. We may know what it looks like based on past experience, but who is to say they have not evolved.
James Cameron's sense of precision allows the movie to make distinctive departures from its predecessor. Ridley Scott was the right director to make a movie as cautious and observing as 'Alien', but it took a man with great nerve to concoct a follow-up that could amp up the adrenaline beyond simple passages of action. Masterfully controlling the tension and moving the involving plot at a lightning pace, Cameron exploits everyone's worst fears and carries them to the riveting extreme in this consummate fright-fest. Where most horror films goose the gore quotient to elicit excitement from audiences, the visceral nature of Aliens is tempered so as not to override the main thrust of the story.
Thanks to him, Aliens proves to be a tightly constructed yarn that has no problem keeping its audience's attention rapt. It is visceral entertainment!