/ | | | \ Wombulus

So this is more of an actual sequel to Alien than the rest of the franchise... read on for if that is a good or bad thing.

Life sucks on a company planet, so when a space ship is nearby with the gear to get out of there, you'd be a fool to pass up on that opportunity, and these teens (no, they are not teens, but-) are no fools. However, you wouldn't believe this, on the ship are some Xenomorph stuff, and, guess what, this gives rise to an Alien that presents a threat they have to deal with.

Okay, so no doubt someone will say "Always has been" but this is basically "Teens visit a Horror House". Exact same vibes, and many of the same plot points! Complete with "you did this to yourselves" and "why are you doing that?" This has space stuff painted over it, and a Giger monster, but still...

But this is also the first movie again. Space ship, alien creature, running around a lot of corridors, and bits reminiscent of the previous movies, this is exactly the sort of sequel that is the first movie again, complete with quotes that are said because characters said them in earlier movies. This is exactly the sort of sequel we would normally get to a movie, where it is the same thing again, which shows up how much they mixed it up for the other movies in this franchise.

The cast is fine, although the character of Andy is coded a neuro-divergent I'll leave to others to say if that is a good thing or not. However, on the production side, this is one damn dark movie. There are lots of lingering shots of "look at this" but dang if I could see what they wanted me to see. And the dialogue got crushed in a lot of places, I was wanting subtitles just to follow what was going on!

This could have been a good movie, but given the range of what we've seen, this feels like "just another movie" and not something special.

[END]