Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Louis M — 19 Nov 2014

Alien Resurrection is like a blueprint on how to take a good overall concept and ruin it. The entire idea of geneticists recreating Ripley so that they can get the alien out of her is fascinating. It's also kind of intriguing how the DNA of the 2 beings merge in unexpected ways. The problem is they botched almost every aspect of the movie surrounding those ideas. For starters they didn't really do much that set Resurrection apart from the prior 3 films. Once they set up how the aliens were manufactured, then they just get loose and start doing the same thing they do every other time. There's very little tension or surprise because by this point it's all a bit predictable. Then there are the creature effects. While they did a much better job with the CGI than in Alien3, the man-alien hybrid they use at the end looks just awful. They needed to create something that looked more sympathetic, but this thing is something you are anxious to watch die.

But no complaint I can make is as big as the cast of characters in Alien Resurrection. They do next to nothing to acquaint us with these people before they start slaughtering them. I think the movie expects me to care about Frank and his crew of misfits but since none of them have any personality, character traits, or history established in the film I am incapable of making any connection with these people. A decent director would know that simply making one guy crippled, one guy sleazy, and one guy black isn't enough to give any depth to these 2-dimensional people. Not to mention Winona Ryder as Call, which could easily be the biggest miscasting job in history. She is almost unwatchable, and I spent most of the movie wishing her character would die. While it seems difficult, the director even managed to get a horrible performance out of Sigourney Weaver. Yes, it is fun to see how she has been somewhat mentally corrupted by the co-mingling of alien DNA, but her creepy glances and awkward movements are just plain hard to watch. Plus there is no logic to anything she does in the film. She seems to bounce back and forth between trustworthy and strangely dangerous in a moment. Aside from maybe one good scene and a basic outline that could have worked, there is nothing redeeming about Alien Resurrection. I hope to never see this again.