Enjoyable viewing

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2014)

A perfectly good SciFi horror. Not to the same spine-tingling standards or as gritty as the original Alien movie, but certainly in the same vein.
The movie follows the tired SciFi cliché of a spaceship full of clashing egos, but I wasn't complaining - it's a format that is proved to work. Sadly, the large cast does mean that there's too little time given to character development but again that's only to be expected.
The heroine Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace, is a fairly strong character but not to Sigourney Weaver standards. She is overshadowed by Michael Fassbender as the quixotic android who rather steals the show. Charlize Theron plays a vile company rep but oddly fails to feature as much as you'd expect (I suspect this is a deliberate red herring to make you think she might end up being the sole survivor rather than Rapace). All in all, it's an interesting cast if short of any truly exceptional performances.
Initially I was disappointed that the Alien creatures didn't feature more but actually that doesn't prove to be a problem. There are various references to them that build up the franchise's mythology in a clever way, from the eggs and nesting sites to a foetus that gets implanted in Shaw's womb (probably the finest scene in the movie).
The pace throughout is good and the destructive finale is a nice echo of the original Alien, with Shaw's survivor instinct on impressive display. A good night's viewing.